


The Masks We Hold

by littleoptimistme



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Banshee Lydia Martin, Bromance, Changelings, Counseling, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Fae Stiles Stilinski, Faeries - Freeform, Fairies, Gen, Grief, Hurt Stiles, Insanity, Kidnapped Stiles Stilinski, Lydia gets hurt, Magic, Magic!Stiles, Magical Stiles Stilinski, POV Third Person, Protective Scott, Reevaluation, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Scott Needs A Hug, Stiles Stilinski-centric, Stiles has magic, Stiles is a changeling and no one knew until it was too late, and its a huge mess, but theyre awkward, fae lore, faeries are not nice, friendships, gen - Freeform, its complicated, lol, luck, lydia and stiles love eachother, romantic relationships arent the main focus, so now hes sort of fae sort of human, something like that, stiles escapes back to beacon hills before he completely looses his mind, stiles is a changeling, stiles is kind of crazy, temporary character 'death'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-08-22 08:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16594250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleoptimistme/pseuds/littleoptimistme
Summary: Werewolves, witches, banshees, demons. Why not add changelings and faeries to the list? After the nogitsune, everything was supposed to go back to normal. But when animals start dying and weird symbols pop up around town, Stiles gets caught up in a past he doesn’t remember and a destiny he doesn’t want. Stiles just wants to feel sane, but it’s too late to be human now. (Changeling Stiles)





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles woke up to Lydia screaming.

He flung himself out of bed, crashed into his desk, and dropped completely on the floor before he could do anything but think  _ Danger! Bad! _

And then he heard her crying.

Stiles scrambled for the light at his bedside table, succeeding in only knocking it too the floor where the light bulb cracked. Stiles cursed. His sheet was still tied around him and a very cold breeze pushed through the room. The window was open. Moonlight streamed inside and rain started to pour through the open window.

Lydia dropped to the floor. She had been silhouetted by the moonlight, but now she was a huddled black lump on the floor. Any fogginess from sleep was now thoroughly purged from Stile’s mind.

“Lydia? Holy crap, Lydia-” Finally managing to rid himself of the sheet, he crawled over the carpet and grabbed her by her shoulders with more intensity than he really intended.

She jumped, hands up to defend herself, and seemed about to jerk away but her eyes met his. She stilled, although her entire body was trembling. There was a cloud of incomprehension over her eyes, but Stiles kept talking to her. He didn’t know what he was saying exactly, and it didn’t matter. After a few minutes, she was breathing with him. Her scream still echoed in his ears

The cloud lifted. She relaxed slightly and then she looked around his room, baffled. “Stiles?” she croaked.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“How did I-?”

Before she could continue, Stile’s door flew open and they both shrieked now, crawling away from the door in unison. But the hallway light revealed a very tousled Noah Stilinski, who appeared to have jumped out of bed just as rapidly as Stiles. He had his gun in his hand, Stiles noted. “What on earth is going on!”

Silence.

Stiles cleared his throat and raised a placating hand. “We’re fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just Lydia.”

Noah blinked. He squinted down at the girl on the floor. She looked very small then, not at all the bossy, larger than life, completely impeccable girl they were used to. She looked confused and afraid and very wet.

Noah dropped his gun to his side and scrubbed a hand over his face. He glanced around the room briefly before switching on the light. It was obvious now that the light was on what had happened. The lamp was broken on the floor, the window wide open and sending drops of rain onto a pile of homework Stiles had been neglecting. Noah shut the window.

“Did she- did you climb through the here?”

Lydia didn’t say anything. She blinked, her eyes wide like a deer’s caught in headlights. “I… I don’t know.”

Wonderful. Stiles got to his feet. “Can you stand?” He reached out a hand to help her, but Lydia pushed him away, her face suddenly heated with embarrassment. She pulled herself up and pursed her lips, slowly drawing that curtain of perfection around her again. She was wearing pink shorts and a dark t-shirt, both which were soaked to the bone. She swiped her wet her behind her ears and hugged her arms to herself. “Well?” she said after a moment.

Both Stalinski’s stared at her without understanding.

She rolled her eyes.

“Are you going to offer me a towel or do I need to beg for it?”

Stiles nodded rapidly. “Oh. Right. I’ll just-” He dashed out of the room and came back a moment later. She’d sat down at his desk chair and Noah was crouched, talking to her quietly when Stiles came back.

“I, uh, I figured you might want something dry to wear as well.” He handed her a pair of basketball shorts and a white t-shirt along with a towel, and his dad nodded approvingly.

Lydia, on the other hand, was less than impressed. She took the clothes, smelled them, and apparently decided they would do.

Stiles fidgeted. “They’re probably too big but-”

“They’re fine, Stiles.” She smiled at him, sort of. She had this way of smiling that didn’t really move the corners of her mouth. It was a sad sort of smile that she did not wear often and Stiles couldn’t tell if this was a real one. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. On one hand, it wasn’t carefree and completely fake, like she sometimes wore at school, but it was still hiding a sort of sadness.

How funny. A year or two ago, she might have rejected the offer completely. She probably would have thrown an absolute fit about having to wear  _ his  _ clothes. But a lot had happened in those few years. Lydia was a royal pain in the behind, but she also had grown some sense, Stiles thought. They all had. Danger did that to a person. Death did that to a person.

So after a few moments of quiet talk, Stiles and his father stepped out of the room so that she could change.

The instant the door closed, his dad hit Stiles with a look. “What’s going on here, Stiles?”

Stiles balked. “You know, I don’t really appreciate the insinuation that I automatically must have done something bad for things to happen. I mean, it’s totally inconsiderate-”

“Stiles-”

“I have no idea. I woke up to her screaming. She must have been sleepwalking.”

Stalinski raised an eyebrow. “She walked all the way across town,  _ more than ten miles _ , while she was asleep. And she ended up. In your bedroom.”

Stiles shrugged. “I mean, I slept walked into the middle of the forest so-”

“You were- no, you were  _ possessed _ , Stiles. I don’t think that counts as normal sleepwalking-”

“Who said it was  _ normal _ ? She’s a banshee! She predicts evil and death and all that with her screams.” He might have taken a moment to contemplate just who’s death she’d been screaming about in his bedroom, but he didn’t really want to. And then he didn’t have to because Lydia opened the door, startling the both of them into silence.

Stiles was not going to deny that seeing Lydia Martin in his bed clothes _did_ _something_ to him, but he really have time for that right now. He nodded once, cleared his throat, and stepped back so that she could come out of the room completely.

Lydia had brushed her hair somehow, and she had her arms wrapped around her stomach tightly. Her feet were bare and muddy but surprisingly unharmed. “This is only slightly less awkward than walking through the forest naked, but I suppose not much competes with that.”

Stiles had to agree, but he didn’t say anything. He was sort of stuck, completely unsure how to proceed and not wanting to look like he was staring at her, but not sure where else to look and-

“How about we sit down.” Stiles breathed a quiet sigh of relief, glad that his dad was taking control. Stilinski laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and guided Lydia down the hall and into the kitchen. They sat down at the kitchen table and Stiles followed them, tripping on the edge of the carpet and almost knocking over the only remaining glass lamp they had in the entire house (he’d broken them all over the years). He caught it, however, and his dad gave him a short glare before turning back to Lydia.

“How about you get in touch with Lydia’s mother,” Stalinski said to him.

Stiles nodded maybe too many times. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.” So he went back to his room, grabbed his cell phone, and scrolled through his contacts. He had Lydia's number and her mothers.

He’d gotten her mother’s number after an unfortunate phase at age fourteen where he spent a good portion of his time trying to figure out ways to contact Lydia, only to never actually call her or her mother (thank god). But either way, he still had her number.

As he wandered back into the kitchen, he could hear the sound of clanking dishes. Lydia spoke in a soft voice. “No, I don’t remember, Mr. Stalinski.”

“Does… does this sort of thing happen to you… usually?”

Stiles paused in the hallway, phone at his ear but not dialed.

“It’s sort of hard to… I guess usually I’m awake, and then I find myself where I need to be.”

“And where is that usually?”

“Usually?”

Dead silence. Clinking silverware. Stiles guessed his dad gave her cereal, which was the default action in the Stalinski house.

Stiles kept listening.

“Sweetheart, it’s okay. You can tell me the truth.”

Lydia huffed. She was upset. Stiles could tell. But she was doing a nice job of covering it up. “Usually, I end up finding a body. But there aren’t any dead bodies here, obviously, so it must have been a fluke! I honestly might have just been sleepwalking like a… normal individual.” Was she smiling that smile again? Or was it the other smile she wore at school; the one that didn’t entirely hide how frightened she was? Was it the blank, I’m-a-dumb-teenage-girl smile she liked to put on?

The silence after that was so skeptical, Stiles could almost smell it. “I don’t think you even know where we live, Lydia.”

“Yes, it's very strange. Do you think Stiles has my mom on the phone yet?”

That was his cue. Stiles rounded the corner, phone out. “You better not be feeding her my Lucky Charms. I’m saving those for the apocalypse.” He handed Lydia the phone and she took it with an eye roll. Meanwhile, his dad narrowed his gaze, not quite sure if Stiles meant that or not.

“I wouldn’t put those dyes in my body,” Lydia said. She took another spoonful of what appeared to be wheat-thins and then put the phone to her ear. The conversation with her mother was short. “Hi, Mom… yeah. No, I’m fine… I’m with the Sheriff, actually… not like that! It’s fine. I… um…” She glanced at Stiles’s dad, and Stalinski held his hand out for the phone. She gave it to him.

“Yes, hello, Mrs. Martin. I found her wandering around outside… yeah completely asleep... I’ll drive her back. Don’t worry… oh absolutely… Of course… See you soon… no problem.”

Stiles noted the slight fib his father gave. ‘Wandering around outside’ was more plausible and less worrying than ‘happened to break into my son’s room’, he supposed.

Lydia stirred her soggy wheat-thins and wouldn’t look at Stiles when he tried to catch her eye.

As soon as his father hung up, he sighed and stood up. “I’m going to get some shoes on and a jacket, then I’ll drive you home, alright?”

Lydia nodded. When it was just Stiles and Lydia in the kitchen, Stiles scrambled for a seat and leaned in. “Okay, so what do you know?”

Lydia scowled. “I don’t know anything-”

“No-” Stiles shook his head. “Don’t do that. I’m not stupid. You were screaming in  _ my _ bedroom and if I’m going to die soon, I would like to know about it.” He felt shockingly calm about this. Things didn’t phase them like him used to. After all, death couldn’t be any worse than being possessed. In fact, Stiles imagined it was like a refreshing nap in comparison to  _ that _ . A shiver ran through the back of his mind. No, he would far rather be dead than be anything but himself thank you very much. This wasn’t to say that he  _ wanted _ to die, but he was not afraid of it as much as he might have been otherwise. It had been weeks since they killed the nogitsune and sure, he wasn’t exactly in perfect mental health, but he was managing. Compartmentalizing. He could do that. If he kept thinking enough thoughts fast enough, he could cover up the ones he didn’t like.

Lydia stirred her soggy wheat-thins.

“I don’t remember anything. I’m not… this isn’t always reliable, Stiles. I’ve been wrong before and I could easily be wrong again.”

Stiles chewed his lip and sat back. “Fine. Okay, fine. So I’m supposed to just sit on this and pretend it didn’t happen? Because that is so dumb and I know  _ you’re  _ not dumb.”

Lydia was silent again. “We’ll talk to Scott at school. Maybe… maybe it was someone else’s death.”

Or maybe Lydia was just getting better at this whole predicting thing and actually managed to find someone before they died. Like banshees  _ usually  _ did.

Stiles forced down is irritation and looked up when his dad came back in the room with a rain jacket on and a pair of sneakers. Stiles jumped up. “I’ll come with you guys-”

“No,” His dad shook his head. “Stiles, you have school tomorrow. You need to go back to sleep. You both have to be up in four hours.”

“But-”

“No buts.” His dad gave him a look and Stiles grumbled but agreed. There wasn’t any real reason for him to come anyhow.

However, once Lydia and his dad shut the door behind them and left Stiles in a very empty house with too many lights on for this late at night (or early in the morning depending on how you put it) he wished he had protested more.

There was no way he could possibly go back to sleep.

* * *

 

School came rapidly and Stiles found himself locking his jeep up in the school parking lot. He ruffled his hair in the window’s reflection, but it didn’t look any better.

He looked different after the whole nogitsune thing. It wasn’t super obvious, but it was there. His eyes were darker and a bit more alert than Stiles remembered. His hair didn’t stay flat and tame the way he wanted it. He was pale and thin and sleep deprived (and that honestly couldn’t be helped. He was trying but sleep was an enemy he had wrestled with for too long). A few days ago, one of the school stoners asked him what he was on, which was a little jarring. Sometimes Stiles would see himself in reflections and for a second, his heart would start hammering.  _ Its back it’s back we didn’t kill it it’s back. _

But the nogitsune wasn’t back. It was just the tinted window and his own messed up face looking back at him. He probably needed therapy. He probably needed a lot of things, a complete brain-wipe of that entire experience, for one. If he could just forget about it, it would be so much easier.

Stiles turned away from his window, shrugged his backpack on and jogged toward the building. He was early for school, which was a first, but he hoped to catch Scott before the first period so he could tell him about Lydia.

There were students milling around, talking to each other, laughing, generally being dumb like kids are supposed to be. Stiles scanned the courtyard for any of his friends. Despite Scott’s recent popularity, Stiles hadn’t reaped a lot of benefits social-circle-wise from being the best friend of the lacrosse team captain (not that he cared). He didn’t know a lot of people, and not many people cared about him. He was still the kinda weird kid that spoke too loud on accident and was usually in detention for something stupid like flicking his pencil into the ceiling tiles or dropping things everywhere or spilling milk or happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time  _ always _ . So yeah, nothing really had changed. Except for Lydia, he admitted. He knew Lydia now, which would have had fifteen-year-old Stiles skipping around the courtyard for joy.

Stiles took out his phone.

**Where are you?**

He waited a minute, leaning against a tree and chewing his lip incessantly.

**omw why?**

Stiles didn’t know how Scott was texting on a motorcycle. 

**Lydia-**

“What about her?”

Stiles jumped about three feet in the air before pocketing his phone and spinning around. “ _ Scott!  _ I hate it when you do that!”

Scott smiled. “I know. What was that about Lydia?”

Stiles’s stomach squirmed. He had to tell him because he was pretty sure Lydia wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean conveying a death omen was any easier. “Last night she-” An uneasy commotion rippled across the courtyard, and Stiles stopped.

They frowned and pushed their way toward the knot of students that was forming near the back end of the school, the side nearest the forest. “What’s going on?”

“I dunno-”

But in a moment, they stood still, stunned as they looked out at the field behind the school. Stiles’s stomach dropped.

Deer, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, a few coyotes, hundreds of birds of all types. They all lay dead across the lawn, their heads crushed in. Someone gagged and ran off. People started shouting, calling for teachers, calling for anyone. Scott and Stiles just stared.

“Look-” Scott pointed at the back end of the building. Stiles looked and wished he hadn’t. The wall was completely covered in blood except for a large symbol that the blood dripped around as if that part of the wall was pushing the pain away. The symbol resembled a P, but with the curved part in the center of the line. Or perhaps a triangle that’s vertical edge continued past its edges. Or a half-mast triangular flag, Stiles settled on. Duh. A flag. He didn’t know what it meant but something (besides the bloody, dead animals everywhere) set him on edge. 

He felt like he was standing on the thin tip of a pane of glass and it he moved even slightly, he’d fall into a deep abyss. Stiles didn’t dare move. Something whispered in the back of his mind but he couldn’t understand-

“Stiles!”

Stiles shook himself and the feeling fled. “Hmm?”

“The animals. They threw themselves into the wall.” Scott grimaced. Stiles didn’t blame him. They stared at the debauchery until someone demanded they go inside. A teacher was moving everyone along, calling out orders. The school bell rung. Someone called the cops along with animal control, and Stiles fell inside the school along with the crowd.

However, he slipped back out the minute a teacher wasn’t looking at him. He ducked behind a bush and watched as cop cars drove up. His dad was one of the first. Noah Stilinski took one look at the wall and sighed tiredly. They were stepping around dead animals, in a field soaked in blood, and Stiles didn’t envy that one bit.

This had to be what Lydia was warning them about. Or it was at least part of it. He pushed the leaves away from his face to get a better view. He was practically inside the entire bush.

As he watched, another car drove up. It wasn’t one he was familiar with, but he recognized the face inside. Dr. Deaton. The veterinarian. Stiles cocked his head. That was weird. They didn’t usually call vets right away like that. And animal control was already here, getting ready to dispose of the bodies. They were dead. Why did they need a vet? Stiles watched Deaton exit his car and join Stiles’s dad on the field. Ah, that made more sense. Dad called him.

Deaton’s mouth was open, mid-sentence when he saw the wall. And seemingly, the symbol on the wall. His face grew slack and he took a nervous step back, glancing at the Sheriff. Stiles strained to hear their voices and he wished Scott had done the  _ responsible  _ thing and come outside here with him so that he could hear what was being said. But he couldn’t hear anything because they were much too far away.

“ _Stilinski_!”  
Stiles cursed and fumbled but someone grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of the bush with surprising strength before depositing him on the concrete. Stiles looked up with a smile. He had leaves in his hair. “Hey, Coach. You look nice today! Did you get a haircut?”

“Shut your trap, Stalinski!” His coach barked. Barking was kind of his default, though, so it wasn’t exactly frightening. “Get inside and mind your own business, you Kreetan!”

“But the-”

“Do you _want_ another detention?”  
Stiles blinked a few times. “Ah... uh, another? What do you mean another?”

Coach laughed. “On top of the one you already have for not being in class right now, of course-!” He dragged Stiles to his feet and pushed him toward the building. 

“Aw, Coach-”

“Literally! Shut! Up! Stalinski!”

Coach was talking loud enough that Stiles's dad actually turned his head at the mention of their name. Stiles’s dad caught Stiles’s eye and Stiles waved cheerily before being forcefully pushed through the front doors and into the dreaded horror that was high school.

The last sight he got was the terrified eyes of Dr. Deaton, who was looking straight at him in a way that suddenly killed every spark of snark in Stiles’s belly. The door closed and Stiles stood still, stunned.

The hall was silent.

At that moment, Stiles knew very suddenly, and with complete, composed clarity that he was going to die.


	2. Chapter 2

The massacre at the school was just the beginning.

Over the next few days, strange thing continued to happen. Massive flowers grew out of every grave in the local graveyard. Poison ivy completely encompassed the library overnight. Cats went missing all over town and were found all congregated together at a lookout point in the forest outside of town. They were alive, but they all stared over the edge of the cliff and had not woken from their trance yet, even when their owners came to retrieve them. A dog was found strangled by his own leash. The leash was not attached to anything. And at each location, there was the same symbol, a half-mast ᚹ, carved somewhere.

Stiles tried searching what it meant and had yet to find anything. He was fairly certain it was a rune. A Celtic rune. But every time he tried to get on the internet, something happened. The wifi went out, the  _ power _ went out, his dad called him, Scott told him there was another scene, etc. It had to be the worst stroke of luck he had ever experienced.

And worse yet, their only expert on  _ anything _ was missing. Scott and Stiles had gone over to the vet several times, but each time, it was closed and Deaton was not there. Scott went to work and found a note saying Deaton had closed up shop for a few days, which was baffling because Deaton  _ never _ closed. He didn’t ‘take vacations’.

“Maybe something’s wrong,”

Scott, Malia, Stiles, and Kira all sat in Scott’s living room in various displays of urgency. Kira, Lydia, and Scott were at the table, pouring over a library book for the rune. Stiles personally was lying on the couch and taking up way too much room and pretending that this didn’t concern him at all. Malia was on the other side, also taking up too much room.

Malia and he had settled into a friendship, which was odd and not what Stiles had expected, but actually not as awkward as he thought it would be. It helped that Malia did not hide her feelings whatsoever. What had happened in that basement hadn’t exactly been planned but Malia didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in a relationship with him. Stiles found that he was alright with that. He didn’t love her. He liked her, sure. She was pretty and she’d offered him something comforting at a time when he thought he might not live much longer. But they decided early after all the drama of the nogitsune that that was not going to happen again. Malia’s complete lack of embarrassment about these things helped that conversation. She did not pursue him, and when he asked her about it, she had looked at him with open eyes that were caring and kind and a little confused, but not mean or offended. She told him he smelled nice and she found him enjoyable to be around, but she was not going to carry his children (this had sent him sputtering for several minutes). It was blunt but sometimes you needed to be a bit blunt. “Uh… friends then, I suppose?”

Malia had squinted at him. “An alliance?”

“Sure?” he squeaked. “If that’s what you understand friends to be?”

“... I approve.”

And now it had been a month and they were shoving each other for some room on a couch that had space for at least four people when you sat on it properly. They were not sitting on it properly. “Move your freaking foot, Malia. You’re gonna rupture my kidney.”

She growled at him.

“Something is most definitely wrong,” Scott mumbled. He mashed the last of his pizza crust into his plate with his thumb. “But I have literally no way to find him. He’s done something to his scent. It doesn’t leave the vet. I didn’t smell blood or anything, though, so I suppose that’s something.”

“Have you tried talking Derek?” Lydia asked.

“He’s gone. Like usual.”

“Could you go to Deaton’s house?”

Scott frowned. “I don’t know where he lives.”

Stiles rolled his eyes from the couch. “Then google it, Scott.”

“I can’t just google someone’s address.” 

“Watch me.” Stiles gave Malia another shove before jumping up and grabbing his laptop out of his backpack. He sat back down on the couch (normally, this time) and Malia watched him with detached interest. Lydia came near as well and sat down on the couch armrest. It didn’t take Stiles long. He had access to the police database (his dad would actually kill him if he knew that) which made it incredibly easy. Karia, who had been quiet for most of this time, now spoke up nervously. “You’re not going to get in trouble for that, are you?”

They all gave her a remarkably synchronized  _ are you kidding me?  _ look to which she raised her hands in surrender. Kira was kinda weird and Stiles thought she was fine as a person, but he didn’t know her that well and he didn’t know what about her had Stiles so enamored. Then again, that wasn’t really his business. She was still into ‘not breaking the law’ which was so outside of Stiles’s range of concern that it actually was alarming. There was a werewolf, a banshee, a fox spirit thingy, and a... a Stiles, in one room and she was really concerned about breaking privacy laws (of which this wasn’t even one??)? This sounded like he hated her, which he didn’t! He really didn’t! He just… “Look, Kira,” He took the laptop off his lap and bent toward her. “ _ Magic _ is  _ killing  _ things. We’re trying to stop it. They will thank us later when they give us the town key.”

Malia cocked her head. “What’s a town key-?”  
Stiles rolled his eyes. “Malia, you are why we can’t have nice things. Scott-”

“Calm down, Stiles.” Scott stood up. They all followed suit, a little surprised by his sudden movement. “We’ve got the address. I’ll go see if he’s home.”

They glanced at each other as if determining whether or not they wanted to continue to argue. Which Stiles did. “Uh, I’m coming with you.”

“I’ll come too,” said Lydia.

Scott considered this, shrugged. “Fine. What about you two?” Kira and Malia glanced at each other. Malia sighed. “I have… the homework.”

“My mom wants me back for dinner. So,” Kira smiled at Scott ruefully. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Scott smiled back, kissed her lightly, and then they all made their way to the door.

Stiles and Lydia road together with Scott following behind them. She gingerly sat down in the passenger seat of Stile’s jeep, and Stiles really tried to not be embarrassed but he was suddenly hyper-aware of every single weird stain everywhere in this car. “Uh, sorry. I know its kind of a mess but-”

“Just drive, Stiles.”

“Yep, okay, on it”

He kept glancing at her as they drove. He couldn’t really help it. It wasn’t until he nearly missed a turn that she returned his look. He expected a snarky jab, but instead, she just looked sad.

He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“What, are you serious?” Lydia twisted her hands in the fabric of her skirt before taking a breath, smoothing it out, and clasping her hands neatly. But a second later she was just wringing them together.

Stiles turned left. He guessed he wasn’t sure if he  _ was  _ serious or not. Things had been wrong for so long he wasn’t exactly phased. They continued in silence until Lydia squirmed.

“You’re going to be fine, you know.”

Stiles snorted. “Yeah. I know.” A pause and then Lydia abruptly slapped his arm. “ _ Ow _ ! What was that for?”

Lydia scowled at him. “Why are you so calm?”

He was trying to keep his eyes on the road and on her at the same time. “What are you talking about?”  
“I came into your room _screaming_. That’s the thing that I do! That’s my whole deal!” She gestured wildly as she talked. “You’re not _dead_ but you _should_ be! That’s the purpose of the scream! And you’re just _sitting there_ bickering with Malia and eating pizza and playing with Scott and _gods_ , it’s like you _don’t even care_! How _dare_ you not care! Have you even _told_ him?”

The answer was no. He hadn’t told Scott about the scream. He hadn’t told anyone. Stiles kept thinking there wasn’t a perfect moment. But he was just afraid of Scott’s response. Scott would quarantine him for the rest of his life and treat him like he was needy. It wouldn’t be on purpose, but Scott would give him these sad, pitying puppy-dog looks. Stiles had his fill of those right after the nogistune. He didn’t need that continual reminder of how fragile he was compared to the rest of them. This would just make it worse. Lydia seemed to be following suit.

Stiles shut his jaw with a click. He tightened his grip on the wheel and suddenly it was much easier to only look at the road. He didn’t know how to respond to her. Heck, he hadn’t thought she felt that strongly about the whole issue. Which was stupid, of course. She was his friend. Of course, she didn’t want him to die. He knew that. He knew that intellectually. It was probably why she hadn’t told Scott herself. It wasn’t real if no one else knew about it.

He swallowed thickly. “I  _ do  _ care.” He cursed under his breath. “You think I’m not  _ terrified _ , Lydia? Hmm? You think I can sleep at night,  _ not at all worried s _ omething might kill me while I’m in bed? You think I don’t spend every waking moment trying not to think about this  _ thing _ that  _ you  _ did-”

“You can’t  _ blame- _ ”

“I’m not! But I’d rather _ not have known _ all the same!” His heart hammered in his throat and his body quivered. He was furious all at once. “If it were my choice, I’d probably be curled in a hole with, like, ten guns around me and a- a  _ bat  _ and one of the Argents bombs or whatever, hoping for the best! But no, I’m not going to do that! Is that what you want? Is that what you want from me, Lydia! I’m not going to cower around waiting to die! I’m going to figure out what’s going on and then I am going to freaking murder whatever it is! And if that means doing whatever I can to keep myself from going absolutely  _ insane _ , that’s what I’ll do!”

He slammed on the break at a stoplight and breathed heavily. His fingers drummed on the wheel.

It was silent.

Guilt squirmed through his chest and he dropped his head. Crap. “I… sorry. You don’t deserve that. I didn’t mean that.”

Lydia didn’t speak. Stiles looked up at her. Her eyes were wide and, to his shock, wet. He’d stunned her. She breathed in shakily. “No, you did. And you’re right”

“No, I-”

“Stop doing that! You’re right!” Lydia’s eyes hardened. She took in a deep breathe and then nodded once. “We have to just keep going. And then we’re going to kill whatever wants to hurt you. That’s all there is to it.”

Stiles’s eyes widened. They didn’t usually talk about killing. Scott was pretty dead set on his Batman moral code thing. He had never questioned Scott’s decision on that matter, but he knew it was naive to assume that everyone else had the same moral code as you did. Bad guys took advantage of good people like Scott. Stiles didn’t voice this opinion of his ever, actually, because he knew it would upset Scott. But it was his opinion all the same. Maybe before the nogitsune, he might have hesitated. But not now. Something had shifted. There was a priority change. That thing had  _ loved _ pain so much. It relished in it. Things like that, things that killed for no reason other than pure enjoyment, or maybe because they didn’t care at all, things like that needed to die.

If he knew now what he knew then, Stiles would have killed Deucalion. He would have tried. He would have killed the Darach too if he had the ability. If the nogistune could be killed, he’d do that too. They were evil. They deserved to get punished for what they’d done. That’s what justice looked like and at some point, putting bad guys in time out just wasn’t enough for Stiles.

Now, something was going around killing animals and causing Lydia to his oncoming demise. He didn’t know what it was but if he came across it, he wasn’t going to hesitate to defend himself. It wasn’t likely that he’d be able to kill something like this, but Stiles wasn’t planning on pulling any punches. And apparently, neither was Lydia.

* * *

 

Stiles leaned forward to squint at the house numbers. They were almost to Deaton’s.

“Stiles?”

“... yeah?”

Lydia unbuckled her seatbelt. Her voice was stern, rebuking. “We did not go through all of that awfulness with the nogitsune for you to go and die on m- on us.”

Stiles cracked a grin even though this was not remotely funny. “Ey, ey, Captain.”

A few seconds later, Scott pulled up and parked next to them. Stiles pocketed his keys and they all made for the front door. Deaton lived in a typical, one-story suburban house that was about as bland as Sunday loafers. There was something off about it that Stiles couldn’t determine exactly. He just… didn’t like it. He glanced at Scott. “Does it look  _ off _ to you or is that just me?”

Scott frowned and inhaled. He shrugged. “Seems fine? He’s got mountain ash everywhere, but that’s to be expected.” As they walked closer to the front door, Stiles saw that there was, in fact, mountain ash everywhere. It was in all the potted plants, it lined the edge of the building and the windowsills. At the front door, a pair of massive metal garden sheers hung open, X-shaped on the wall. Underneath was a quaint wooden sign-  _ welcome.  _ Stiles stared at the shears, irritated. What kind of dumb thing was that to put on a door? He couldn’t just put a horseshoe up like every other superstitious person?

Then again, Deaton wasn’t superstitious, he was cautious and prepared.

Still.

“Deaton is so weird.”

Scott frowned at him and knocked on the door. “Dude, what is your deal?”

Stiles shifted his weight uncomfortably and lifted his hands in the air. He didn’t really know. “Just sayin’.”

They waited a minute and no one came to the door. Scott knocked again, louder now. “Doc? Doc, it’s Scott! We need to talk to you!”  
Nothing.

Stiles opened his mouth to suggest they just forget about Deaton and go find Mr. Argent instead (despite the fact that Mr. Argent had already said he didn’t know what the rune meant) When the door cracked open.

Deaton looked out at them with a guarded expression which gave away absolutely nothing. The hallway behind him was dark. Stiles inched back. “Hello, children.” Deaton sounded tired, resigned perhaps. His eyes were deep-set and bloodshot and his shirt was wrinkled and he looked every bit like a crumpled bit of newspaper. This was far from the Deaton they typically knew. “I suppose I owe this visit because of the recent odd happenings.”

Scott nodded rapidly. “We’ve been trying to reach you, but the vet was closed and-”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.” Deaton started to close the door.

“What?”

“I don’t know anything that would be of help, unfortunately-” Lydia grabbed the door before it could close, pushing pass Scott and glaring at Deaton.

“We don’t have the luxury of being brushed off, Dr. Deaton. So unless you are being held captive, we are going to talk to you because you  _ obviously _ know  _ something _ , which is better than us since we know  _ nothing. _ ”

Both boys stared at her in shock, but they shouldn't have. This was Lydia after all and Lydia didn’t take bull from anyone.

Deaton hesitated and then nodded. He pulled back the door and Scott and Lydia walked in. Stiles hesitated, not liking the dark hallway beyond one bit. Something was wrong. Something was really, really-

“Oh! Sorry about that!” Deaton jumped forward. With a flick of his wrist, he shut the open sheers on his door.

Stiles blinked. How was this guy actually not crazy? Shaking his head, Stiles followed them into the house.

It actually wasn’t as dark as he thought once he was inside. Deaton had a sort of eighty’s cowboy decor going on that Stiles wasn’t super fond of. But he couldn’t really fault him too much for his lack of interior decorating skills. Then again, there were no less than seven cowboy hats hanging around the room, lampshades with painted horses on them, and, ah,  _ there  _ were the horseshoes on the wall, so maybe he could.

They followed Deaton to the kitchen where he gestured for them to take a seat at the table. The table in question was covered in books and loose papers, bottles, and juices, and other icky things Stiles did  _ not _ want to know the contents of. He took a seat gingerly on the edge of a chair and hoped this meeting would go by quickly.

Deaton shuffled through some pages, chewing on his lip. “I have been researching for the rune since I first saw it. I thought I knew what it was, but I wanted to make sure. I closed up the vet because… well, this could all be very dangerous and it was better to keep these books in my house-”

Scott leaned forward. “So you know what it is? Do you know what made it?”

Deaton caught his words a few times and shut the book in front of him. “Shouldn’t you all be at school?”

“It was a teacher meeting day,” Lydia offered. “But this is more important anyway.”

Deaton clearly didn’t want to talk about this. Scott didn’t seem to be picking up on that. Was he not seeing Deaton’s nervous glances? The way his hand was shaking? What the actual heck was could scare  _ Deaton _ ?

Deaton caught Stiles’s eye but hastily looked away. He took a deep breath and seemed to come to some decision. “I believe the rune is Celtic in origin. It means something like  _ a gateway _ , or crossroads.”

They stared at him.

“So… what does that mean?” Stiles said.

“I can’t be entirely sure but, it is possible that the runes, these  _ sacrifices _ , as they may well be, are building up to making a gateway.”

Scott frowned. “Like how the nogitsune got through the nemeton?”

Deaton wrinkled his nose. “Vaguely. But the nogitsune was here in this world. It was merely trapped. It used the doors in your minds, or Stiles’s mind, rather, to exist here. This is different. This is a forced opening between dimensions. Something is trying to come through-”

“I’m sorry-” Stiles held up a hand. “Did you just say  _ dimensions _ ? What is this,  _ Doctor Who _ ?”

“Not remotely,” Deaton continued. He had a way of keeping his voice so steady, almost monotone, in a sort of whisper. Stiles found it irksome. “There are many creatures that reside in worlds near our own, but only one type that would attempt to get through using Celtic magic.”

They waited.

“Well?” Lydia snapped. “What is it?”

Slowly, Deaton opened his book. He turned it around so that they could see. On the page of the very old, very large book, there was a faded drawing of a strange, angular person with glowing cat-like eyes and an ethereal beauty that was almost painful to look at. They were wearing luxurious coats of various color and style like they had decided to wear parts of clothing from every piece of clothing in their wardrobe. It made Stiles think of the Mad Hatter mixed with a Tolkien-esk elf. Deaton sighed. “The Fae.”

There was a shocked pause.

And then Scott spoke up. “Well. Banshees, werewolves, fox spirits, why not Fae… I’m guessing we’re not talking about Tinker Bell, here.”

Deaton huffed. “Not even a little bit.”

Stiles huffed and sat back with his arms crossed. “Okay fine. So what does it want? Why is it trying to come here? Does it want to hurt people?”

Deaton shook his head and closed the book. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “All the lore seems to say that Fae have… odd moral compasses. They are very old and mortality is foreign to them. And, yes, they are dangerous. Impossibly dangerous. Fae breathe magic. They  _ exist _ in it. While humans are creatures of logic and mathematics and science and order, they are creatures of disorder, chaos, and their own type of laws. Regular laws of physics don’t apply to them. They are nearly impossible to kill.” It was making more sense now why Deaton was so frightened.

Stiles opened his mouth.

“Fortunately, there are only a few reasons these types of Fae come to our world, especially at this time of year. After all, there’s only one day until Halloween. That’s probably when they’ll make it through their gateway.”

“What reasons?” Lydia asked.

Deaton’s eyes were heavy. He tapped his fingers nervously on the cover of his book and kept his eyes down. “As I said, they are not orderly beings. This could all be on a whim.”

Stiles scowled. He did not like this whatsoever. These Fae were far too similar to the last villain they faced. It was nearly impossible to plan against a creature that acted at random. “So you’re saying they might come here for a killing spree… on a whim?”

Deaton lifted his hands up. “Or not. They usually don’t mean people harm unless someone offends them.”

“Yeah, that’s what people said about the nogitsune and we all know how that went-”

“Stiles-” Scott warned.

Stiles was on a roll, though. “We can’t keep doing this! These things just keep on coming! Why do these  _ chaos _ thing keep coming after us!”

No one said anything, but Lydia gave him a look and it was soft and it was kind, and Stiles found himself calming down a bit. He sighed and dropped his head to the table. “Sorry. Continue.”

It took a minute, but then Deaton did. “We still have at least twenty-four hours. I’ve been researching as much as I can.”

Stiles wanted, he  _ really wanted _ , to give Deaton a piece of his mind. This was serious and Deaton had just been hiding in here, not giving them information!

Scott kneaded his brow. He cursed quietly. “Okay… okay, so, can we talk to them? Is there a way to contact them? Reason with them?”

“Reason about what?” Lydia said. “You don’t know what they want. They could want nothing.”

“Or they could want to eat us all-”

“Stiles, please.”

“It’s true!”

They looked up to Deaton, who was already opening more books. “I think I read about a spell somewhere… If we knew where the gate was going to open, you could at least meet them when they arrive.” He nodded a few times, settling on a page in his book. “Yes. I could do that.”

Scott looked relieved. He sat back. “Okay. That’s something. That’s a plan”

_That’s a suicide attempt,_ Stiles thought. 

“How fast can you make it?”

Deaton pursed his lips. “I could have it ready by tomorrow. In the meantime, you should try finding as much pure iron as possible. Just in case. It’s like wolfsbane to them.”

Stiles didn’t like this vague, wishy-washy plan they had going on, but it wasn’t like he had a better idea. They continued talking, discussing possible things that could be made of iron, and Stiles stopped paying attention.

When Scott and Lydia, stood up to leave, Stiles trailed behind them. Something was bugging him. “Is there anything else we should know about them?” he asked suddenly.

Deaton froze up. He looked him directly in the eye, struggled, and then shook his head. “Not that I am aware of.”

Stiles didn’t believe him for an instant. But Scott was calling for him at the door. With a low curse, Stiles twisted around to follow his friends out of the door, but Deaton grabbed his arm.

“Stiles,” he said. “Perhaps you ought to sit this one out. These beings are incredibly dangerous.”

Stiles gave him a look. He clearly did not understand Stiles if he thought  _ that _ was going to make him lay low. He pulled out of Deaton’s grasp. “Funny. See, I don’t  _ do _ the whole ‘sit out and wait for the storm to pass’ thing? I’m more of a ‘dive head first into potential danger out of curiosity’ person?” Unlike  _ some _ people.

Deaton crossed his arms. “I know.”

Shaking his head, Stiles left him. What a total piss pants.

“So he’s totally lying about something,” he said, the moment the door was closed.

Scott frowned. “I would have heard his heartbeat if he was lying, Stiles. What is your problem with him today?”

Stiles blinked disbelievingly at Scott. Seriously? Stiles stuffed his hands in his pockets and glared at the doorway with those open sheers dangling from the top. “Whatever. Let’s go find some iron. If he’s right, we don’t have a lot of time.”


	3. Chapter 3

That night, Stiles had a horrible dream.

He was in a locker.

This was not an uncommon way to start his nightmares. He was so used to it that it shouldn't be frightening anymore. But it was. He couldn't move his arms hardly at all, his legs were cramping up, and it was so hot in here he could hardly breathe.

He stood very still. "Oh, gods." Sweat beaded down his neck and on his upper lip. He could taste the salt. "This is just in your head. Just in your head-" It was dark but he could look through the slits in the metal. He was not in the boy's locker room, as he expected; as he usually he was in this nightmare. He was breathing too fast. Too lightly. He punched the door. "Let me out! Hey! Hey, someone let me out!" His voice broke and he continued hitting the door. Faster and faster and faster-

"Don't worry!" said a voice.

Everything stopped.

It was a little boy's voice. A kid. Stiles swallowed thickly, shaking. " Get me out of here! "

"What's the numbers?"

Stiles didn't know. This wasn't his locker. Only the big kids got lockers. The 5th and 6th graders.

"I'll- I'll get a teacher!"

"No!" Stiles pressed his face up to the crack. On the other side, the boy was looking in at him. Their eyes met. It was Scott! "I already got in trouble. I'm not s'posed to be over here!" Neither was his rescuer, for that matter.

"Oh," the boy Scott whispered. "Okay. I'll. Um… Oh! Oh, look!"

Stiles thought that was a stupid thing to say because he couldn't see anything. "What is it?"

"I don't think it needs a code. You just have to open it this way…" Some metal things changed around. Stiles hastily wiped his eyes. He wasn't crying. He didn't cry about things anymore. He'd already cried enough. But he hated being locked in a locker and those kids did it all the time.

The door opened, and Stiles fell out onto boy.

But suddenly, the boy wasn't Scott anymore. A little blonde child with a pointy nose stared up at him. He opened his mouth. "ʍɥo ɐɹǝ ʎon?"

Stiles's brain buzzed. What was that? "I don't understand you. What're you saying?"

The boy blinked. He didn't seem to understand Stiles anymore than Stiles understood him. "I lᴉʞǝ ʎon," the boy said. He smiled at him. "ʍɥɐʇ's ʎonɹ uɐɯǝ¿"

Stiles didn't know what exactly he was supposed to say. He hedged a guess. "I'm Stiles."

Apparently, that was the wrong answer. "No."

A clock ticked in the background.

The light and color bled out of the room. Stiles stopped walking. He wasn't a little boy anymore. Neither was the other boy. They stared at each other and Stiles gulped. What had been a quiet elementary school was now a broken place filled with dust, shattered glass, and cold light. Golden blobs of light floated in the distance and there was a ringing in Stiles's ears. Stiles tried to take a step, but his feet were stuck to the floor. He fell and the shock of it jarred up his forearms and his hands were stuck in black tar and he couldn't breathe and there wasn't any air left between him and the boy. The blonde boy knelt down to look at him with green eyes slitted like a cat's.

"Don't hurt me. You don't want to hurt me."

They were children again.

Sitting on his knees, Stiles stuck out his tongue as he lined his army guys up. They both had marbles as weapons to attack each other's armies. The other boy lay on his stomach, marbles ready to be flicked.

"My mom," Stiles said. He flicked a marble at the boy's guys and then rolled them all at once. "IT'S A BOMB ATTACK!"

"That's not fair!"

Stiles wasn't scared anymore. "My mom called me Mischief."

Mischief.

Stiles blinked and the scene changed. The boy shoved Stiles against a door, claws holding him by the neck. Suddenly the boy's hands were searing hot. Stiles screamed in agony as a spot at the base of his neck smoked and blistered-

Stiles woke up sweating and gasping and tangled in his blankets. He grabbed his neck reflexively, only to jerk back in pain. He didn't dare close his eyes lest he saw the school again. Stumbling to his feet, Stiles threw himself out of his bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom, where he flicked on the light.

He squinted, rubbed his eyes, but it was already fading even as he looked at it. It was the rune, branded into his skin right at the base of his neck.

A moment later, it faded to white, and then it was gone.

Stiles stared. He touched the spot lightly, but it didn't hurt. Did he just imagine that? Maybe he'd dreamed it?

Shaking his head, Stiles left the bathroom flopped back into his bed. What the heck was that?

Stiles scrubbed his face with his hands, wriggled and tugged his sticky shirt off. What time was it? He picked up his phone.  **6:36 AM.**  He dropped the phone to his chest. It wasn't even worth going back to sleep. He had to be at school at seven thirty anyway. But he didn't move. He tapped his fingers over the spot where the rune had been and tried very hard to convince himself that he had still been dreaming and the smell of burning flesh that still lingered in his mind was nothing but an illusion. He was just worried about tonight.

It was better to just not think about these things.

Maybe they should just avoid school entirely, go find Deaton, get the spell/potion/whatever it was to find the Fae and spend the rest of the day preparing for that. Stiles's heart was still beating too fast.

Forcing himself to sit up, Stiles was about to start getting dressed when his phone screen brightened. A text. From Scott. Deaton's almost done with the thing. I'll bring it to school.

Well, that decided it, then. Stiles picked up the phone and paced up and down his bedroom. He grabbed a shirt from his dresser at random, smelled it (eh, it was good enough), and then threw it on, followed by a pair of jeans.

He should tell Scott about the dream. He should tell him about Lydia and he should tell him about the scream and he should tell him about the horrible blanket of dread that was on his shoulders.

Stiles pocketed his phone nervously. It was fine. He'd already caused so many problems lately. He was fine.

Yeah.

* * *

At school, Scott and Stiles met at their lockers.

"So, do you have it?"

Scott nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a necklace. At the end was a strange ball of twine wrapped around a hoop like a very small dreamcatcher. Stiles eyed it. "Okay, so what does it do?"

"Deaton said that once it's activated, it'll fly toward the thinnest spot between their world and ours. He's gonna meet us after school to activate it."

Stiles blinked. "It'll fly . Like some kind of Harry Potter thing."

Scott cocked his head. "Uh, yeah? I dunno, probably?"

"If you straight up tell me you still haven't seen Harry Potter, I am actually going to shrivel up and die right here."

Scott grimaced. "Uh…"

"I have never been so betrayed in my entire life" Stiles swung his arm over his shoulder, and they walked toward class "Okay so we get that thing going and then-" He stopped suddenly and stepped away from Scott. He frowned. "Did you see that?"

Scott had the charm hanging from his fingers. He shook his head. "See what?"

Stiles blinked a few times and then shook his head. They pushed open their classroom door. "I just… thought it was swinging weird for a second."

As they went to take their seats, Scott frowned. "That's not possible. It hasn't been activated."

Stiles shrugged and flopped into his seat, dropping his backpack on the floor. "I dunno, man." He didn't say anything, but he should have. He should have told Scott right then that the charm had started pulling toward Stiles. He should have told him everything that had happened of late. But he didn't, and later, as people often do, he would look back on this moment and wonder if things would have been different if he had told the truth.

School was an absolute torture session. Not only did Coach think it was a wonderful day to fling out emotional abuse on a platter, but time had slowed down to the speed of a disabled slug in a mud puddle. Stiles wanted to bang his head against his desk. He settled for tapping his fingers incessantly and clicking his pen until Scott smacked him with the back of his biology notebook.

" Sorry, " Stiles whispered. The people around him grumbled. Apparently, Scott wasn't the only one irritated by his movements. But he couldn't keep still. Not today (well, not usually, but especially today). His foot started jiggling all on its own and Stiles didn't bother stopping it.

The second the bell rung, Stiles was out of his chair, only to be swung around by his teacher's The bell doesn't dismiss you, I do! which meant he had to sit in class for five more minutes about to explode.

He was out of there like a bullet from a chamber the moment he could, and he scrambled across the school to meet Scott at the front door. He skidded around the corner. Scott was already there with Lydia, Kira, and Malia. Kira and Malia had apparently been filled in. They all looked up at him.

"Sorry, the teacher-" He gasped for breath. "She was… it was… late…. Let's just... go."

Lydia gave him an unimpressed eyebrow, but Kira swallowed a smile, so he took that as a win. They walked out of school quickly, the more human of them in coats. Actually, only Lydia wore a (fashionable, yellow) coat because Stiles had left his at home on accident. Malia, Scott, and Kira didn't appear to need coats despite the late fall chill, which wasn't surprising. The sky was overcast and gunky, and the trees just barely hung onto their leaves. It was a very cold day for California overall, and Stiles hugged his arms around himself as he fumbled for his keys. His breath hung in the air.

"Where did Deaton want to meet us?" Kira asked.

"The Vet."

They piled into Stiles's jeep, the three girls in the back, and Scott in the passenger seat. The ride there was uneventful and tense. They were nervous, all of them. These things were going to arrive tonight and none of them had the remotest idea what they wanted. Stiles would guess they weren't coming for a cup of coffee, but he kept that to himself.

Deaton was at the front door when they piled out. He had several metal pipes, those metal shears, an old ironer, some fireplace pokers amongst other things. Scott had put some pipes in Stiles's car earlier, but this definitely added to the whole iron weaponry they had going on.

Deaton quickly started handing out a variety of necklaces and bracelets with little iron charms. Or, Stiles would guess they were iron.

"Doesn't Stiles get one?"

Stiles shrugged. "I've got pipes. I'm good."

A wind blew through their clothes and Stiles shivered. They couldn't have a nice warm night to go tromping around in the woods, now could they? Scott was talking and Stiles forced himself to concentrate.

"... go with Stiles, and the rest of you go with me."

Stiles frowned. "Uh, what?"

Lydia shifted her weight. She didn't look him in the eye. "I just… I just thought maybe you should search with Deaton. I think that's a good idea. It's going to be really dangerous and… yeah."

Deaton nodded. "We'll split up. I'll go with Stiles with one charm, you all go with Scott with the other charm. These things are not very accurate anyhow."

Stiles boiled under his skin. He knew exactly what she was doing. She'd convinced Scott that he shouldn't come along because he was human, and it was so freaking sneaky of her. He couldn't say no, because that would mean telling Scott about Lydia's scream, and then Scott would just make him stay anyway. It was a little weird how fast Deaton was agreeing but Stiles didn't care all that much. He glared at Lydia until she met his eyes and looked away from him with her nose held high. How dare she mother him like this.

The others didn't seem to notice. Scott gave Stiles a concerned look. "Are you cool with that?"

Stiles didn't try to hide his displeasure. "Cool? No, not really. But whatever. 'Stiles is only human,' after all."

Scott searched his face and Stiles got the impression that they would be talking about this later. Deaton stepped in before the brewing argument could get any further. "We should be on our way then. They could be here anytime."

Without further hesitation, Deaton took out one of the charms that Scott had, and Scott handed him the other. Deaton closed his fists around them, muttered something, and handed Scott's back to him.

Stiles blinked. "What? That's it?"

Scott looked at the necklace closely, dangling from his fingers. "Are you sure it-?" But even as he spoke, the charm began to sway back and forth, as if pushed by the wind, and then it tugged toward the street. They all looked at each other. "Okay. That way it is." And with that, Scott, Lydia, Malia, and Kira started off toward the forest on the other side of the street.

Stiles crossed his arms. "This is literally such a crappy move. No offense, Deaton, but I am fully capable of being extremely, like, dangerous and whatever." He turned around when Deaton didn't respond. "Deaton? Uh… where did," Stiles spun in a small circle. "Where did you… go?"

A shuffle behind him.

Suddenly, a pang of dread dropped on Stiles like a wooden mallet. He cursed quietly and tried to turn toward the sound. There was Deaton.

"I'm sorry, Stiles-"

Stiles opened his mouth, but suddenly SLAM- something cracked against the back of his head. A wave of pain rolled over him, and the earth fell into his face. It was dark.

* * *

He woke up seconds later feeling absolutely horrible. His head pounded to the beat of his heart, and he could hardly see. It was dark and everything was fussy. There was something tight on his arms. On his wrists. He was tied to a chair!

Panic shook into the cracks of his cottoned brain, and he struggled against the restraints. What was going on? How did he get here? " Help!" he croaked. But that was not nearly loud enough. He tried again and ended up coughing on his own spit.

"It's alright, Stiles," a voice said soothingly. Stiles blinked and squinted. He knew that voice. "I'm not going to hurt you."

His vision started to settle. He could see he was in a small, dark room with a single barred window that let in blue evening light from outside. A blobbish sort of form crouched in front of him. His captor, surely.

Wait. Scott! He needed to call Scott.

Stiles shivered. "I'm not afraid of you," he managed. "I have seen way more scary things than you." And he had. It was false to say that he wasn't afraid. But he wasn't as afraid as he had been a few weeks ago. Nothing quite compared to the nogitsune.

The person sighed. "I know. I wish I didn't have to do this and I hope someday you'll forgive me. I'm just trying to keep you safe."

Stiles's ears rang. There was something heavy on his chest. It itched his skin like poison ivy. "You've got a weird concept of  _safe_ ," he spat.

His captor sighed again and came closer.

Stiles recognized him suddenly, as his vision finally decided to cooperate. It was Deaton. Siles jerked from him and cursed loudly. "I knew something was off about you!"

Deaton grimaced. "You probably sensed the large amounts of iron, not to mention dispelling charms I have on my person. It makes sense, given how close you are to the end, but that's not important. Stiles, are you listening to me?"

Stiles tightened his jaw and wished he could punch the living daylights out of this man. "I thought you were our friend !"

Deflated, Deaton stood up to pace. He didn't say anything for a long time, and Stiles took the opportunity to look at his surroundings quickly. There was something still on his chest. Stiles curled his neck down trying to see what it was.

A necklace. One of those iron charms. Deaton must have done something to it. It was keeping him groggy. Did he do that to all the charms? Was he trying to hurt Scott too? What about the others? He needed to warn them. They could be headed right into some kind of trap!

Around the room, there was a multitude of metal piping, a shelf filled with jars of things Stiles couldn't discern, another shelf filled with books, and another with food and other survival supplies. This must be some kind of storeroom. A lockdown… place? Where were they? Where they still at the vet? How long had he been unconscious?

"Scott is going to kick your little- no, scratch that, I am going to kick you back into your mother's womb when I get out of here!"

Deaton paused long enough to grant him an unimpressed stare.

"I am only keeping you here because I know you won't stay put otherwise. But you have to understand, if I can keep you safe, if I can keep them away from you for the rest of the night, they may get bored. They're fickle creatures. They'll have to go back to their world, and you'll be safe for now." He cocked his head at Stiles. "Do you understand?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

Deaton sighed. "I promise. I'll explain in the morning. For now… I need to reinforce the gates." With that, he started for the door.

Stiles couldn't believe it. Had the guy gone completely insane? "You're just going to leave me here?"

Deaton turned at the doorway, looking almost sad. "Believe me, Stiles. This is the safest place you could possibly be."

And with that, he shut the heavy, metal door behind him with a hearty slam.

Stile was left in the darkness, the only sounds being his harsh breathing and the dripping condensation down one of the walls.

Stiles dropped his head, cursed, and struggled with the rope binding his hands. Panic started to claw up his throat and Stiles forced himself to breathe. Breathe slower. Calm down. Focus. He couldn't freak out right now. He couldn't afford it.

Stiles closed his eyes and felt for the knot on the rope. It was impossibly tight. Focus, Stiles.

Addison had been trained on how to get out of a situation like this. She'd showed him and Lydia at one point. What was the first thing? What could he do?

Stiles opened his eyes and scoured the room. There was nothing sharp nearby. Cutting the rope wasn't exactly possible with his fingernails.

But what if he…

Stiles kicked at his shoe, pushing and pushing it with his heel until his sneaker came off. Good. That was a start. Now that his shoe was gone, Stiles tugged at his leg and wriggled it until he freed his foot from the rope. He did the same to the other foot.

Okay. Now he had feet. What was next?

He needed to get his hands free. Stiles wriggled his wrists back and forth. It was very tight, but there was a slight give. He thought it might be because it wasn't actually a rope that was tying him, but some type of polyester dog leash. Whatever. Either way, it was stretching. He pulled and pulled until there!

He had a hand again!

The next hand was easy, and after that, it was just a matter of wriggling down under the rope around his chest. Once he was free, he gasped and threw off the charm. It clattered in the corner and instantly, Stiles felt ten times more alert.

It took him twenty minutes, tops, to get out of the chair and Stiles was impressed with himself. It took Addison three hours, didn't it? He smiled, smug. Then again, Addison would have been tied with real, professional knots, which he doubted Deaton was capable of, so maybe he shouldn't be so smug. Perhaps as well, Deaton hadn't tied him as tight because, in truth, he really did not want to hurt him. Stiles played with that idea before carefully setting it aside. He didn't have enough proof to consider that Deaton really was trying to keep him safe.

No. It was more likely that this was a trap somehow. Stiles pursed his lips and forced himself to accept that for now.

Stiles put his shoes back on and tried the metal door quietly. It was locked, as he expected. There was no way through there. To the window, then. Stiles walked up to it, massaging his wrist, and stood up on top of the chair he'd freed himself from to peer outside. He couldn't see much over the overgrown grass, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a familiar white fence. This was behind the vet. It had to be. Stiles pushed open the window and tugged at the metal bars. The wind bit at his knuckles. How on earth was he going to remove the bars?

Stiles chewed his lip and thought. His heart was racing and he knew Deaton could be back any second. He needed to get out of here now . But all he could think about was this one MythBusters episode where they tried to melt metal bars with salsa, and that was such an unhelpful memory that it actually infuriated him. "Don't have time for acid," he muttered.

Jumping down from the chair, Stiles started sifting through the shelves. He needed something strong. Something fast that could quickly get rid of metal bars. He knocked down several cans of food and winced, waiting for Deaton to come running back in here and tie-

Wait.

Wait.

There was an easier way to do this.

Stiles picked up a hunk of wood from off the ground and pressed himself against the shelf next to the door. He took a deep breath.

And then Stiles started screaming. He screamed as loud and as pain-filled as he possibly could. He screamed until he was sure no one was going to come, and then he kept screaming. "HELP! SOMEONE! DEATON! HELP ME THERE'S SOMETHING IN HERE!" and the like, until he heard footsteps running down a staircase.

He tensed.

Deaton jerked open the door, and before Stiles could even think to hesitate, his body rushed forward, and he brought the wood down on the back of Deaton's head.

Deaton dropped like a stone.

And Stiles dropped the wood, stunned. That actually worked. How had that actually worked?

"Please don't be dead. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't be dead-" Stiles crouched down and rolled him over. Deaton was bleeding from a large gash on the back of his head, but he was breathing. Stiles relaxed slightly.

As he was considering whether or not to tie Deaton up like Deaton had tied him up, the ground shook beneath Stiles's feet.

Stiles stilled, arms out to steady himself. Earthquakes were common occurrences where he lived, but he very much doubted that this was a coincidence. He needed to get to Scott. He needed to get to him yesterday. Grabbing Deaton under his arms, Stiles vaguely dragged him to the edge of the room, where things would probably not fall on him, and then he stood up. "Sorry, Doc. Gotta go."

And with that, Stiles rushed out of the room. He scrambled up a rickety wooden staircase and came up out of a trapdoor in the floor of... a bathroom decorated with pink stickers of cats and dogs.

Well, Alan Deaton was nothing if not innovative. Stiles ran out of the bathroom, through the cat kennel 'lounge' as it was called, and jumped over the small gate that kept unwanted visitors out of the veterinary. He was outside in what felt like an instant.

He scanned the parking lot. There! His jeep was still here. Stiles ran for his car, threw himself into the driver's seat, only to pause. His keys.

He felt in his pockets. No keys.

"Deaton probably took them. It's okay. It's okay." Stiles raced back out of the car, into the vet, and scrambled around the desk. He knocked over cups of pencils, emptied drawers. And there! There in a little dish! His keys and phone. He grabbed them, and in less than ten seconds, was screeching down the road.

Stiles didn't know where he was going. He didn't know where Scott could have gone. So as he drove toward the forest, he brought up Scott's contact and called him.

The phone rang once, and Scott answered.  **"Finally, Stiles! I've been calling you forever! Where are you-"**

"No time! I think this is a trap! Something is a trap, Scott! You've got to get away, okay! Where are you?"

**"What? What are you talking ab-"**

" Where are you? "

"The charm led us to the lookout point at the edge of town. We're there now. Something is- there's-"

Suddenly the ground under Stiles's jeep began to shake. A tree fell backward into the forest. Scott's voice dropped into static. The wheel jerked under his hands.

"Scott! Scott, are you there?!" Stiles cursed and hung up. It was fine. He knew where they were.

Jolting the car left up a dirt road, Stiles started toward the lookout point. The earthquakes kept coming. They were getting worse, and the road was starting to fill with trees and rocks.

He couldn't drive anymore.

Stiles made a quick assessment and then turned his car off. He'd go the rest of the way by foot. Scott needed to know this was a trap. He needed to know that Deaton was up to something!  
Jumping to the damp earth, Stiles grabbed one of the metal pipes. It was just like at bat. Sure. Shutting the door, he stuffed his keys into his pocket and left his jeep in the woods. She'd be fine hopefully.

Stiles was sharp, alert. His heart pounded in his aching head like it was trying to squish its way out of his skull. He tightened his grip on the pipe and kept running uphill to the lookout point. The lookout point was at the very edge of a cliff in the forest just outside of town. Hikers liked to picnic there and teenagers liked to do… other things there. Stiles darted around a pile of rocks, almost missing it.

But something caught his eye and Stiles now had his eyes on the floor as he ran.

Mushrooms. There were mushrooms everywhere. They grew out of every crack in the ground, every damp spot. And they were huge, some of their tops larger than Stiles's head. The further he ran, the more mushrooms there were. And it wasn't just mushrooms. Weirdly large flowers dotted his path and he thought they turned their pretty faces toward him as he ran. What the heck?

He was gasping. Stiles was in better shape than he had been before it became common for him to run for his life, but he wasn't an Olympian. Not to mention, the nogitsune had wreaked whatever muscle build he had when it made him sick. Forcing himself to breathe through his nose even though it hurt, Stiles slowed and ducked behind a large tree that was tattooed with lovers names. He stuttered and gasped and his legs shook. The lookout point was just ahead. He could see the edge of the cliff, where the world dropped off. From this position, it looked like there was nothing but sky beyond this. It was the edge of the earth. The end of the world.

He squinted. Where was Scott? Where were Lydia, Malia, Kira?

He came closer, hiding behind another tree. The pipe was now sweaty in his palms and if he'd been cold before, he wasn't now.

Someone screamed and Stiles jumped. That was Malia. He recognized her voice. Where were they? He came closer. He could hear sounds of a fight now. People shouting, grunting, falling, ripping fabric, the sound of knuckles against skin.

But as he came to the edge of the world, no one was there. The sounds were all around him. He spun in a circle. "Scott! Scott, where are you?" He didn't care if someone heard him now. His friends were in trouble. The pipe was shaking as he held it up and he hated that. He hated how he trembled. Behind him, the sun set into the earth.

"STILES!"

Scott's voice ripped through the air, tinged with a familiar rumbling roar Stiles was familiar with. Stiles swung toward him. Something in his mind shifted like he'd been listening to a radio station just slightly knocked out, and now he'd found the right number. The static cut away and he could see clearly. Stiles gasped in shock.

He was standing in a complex series of interlocking circles made out of mushrooms that glowed an eerie green and blue and yellow light. There! There was Scott! He was in full wolf form, snarling and snapping at something that held him back by his arms. The things, they shimmered against the forest background, and Stiles could only barely get a glimpse of their appearance before they were gone. Scott's eyes were wide and red and… and terrified.

Stiles lifted his pipe, backing away from the things in the forest. He scanned the floor. There were the rest of his friends, lying on the floor in various uncomfortable positions. Blood pooled around Lydia's head and Stiles's throat closed. He stiffened wet sob. He'd been right. This was a trap. He just didn't know who's. Or what was going on, or how everything had gone so horribly.

"STILES RUN!" Scott roared.

Stiles tried. He really did. He took a step backward, but one of the figures holding Scott lifted a hand, and vines grew up from the dirt. They tangled around his legs. Stiles shrieked, nearly falling.

In retrospect, he would realize that if he had taken any more steps back, he could have fallen off the cliff, but in the moment, he only knew that he was trapped and this was bad and Lydia was bleeding -

"STILES!"

Stiles's head whipped toward Scott. What was going on? Why couldn't he figure out what was going on?

Scott looked at him, his face human again. He was crying, Stiles realized suddenly. Why was Scott so scared?

Well. This wasn't going to do. "Let go of him, tinkerbells! I've got a- I've got a pipe! Don't test-" Stiles froze.

There was something standing in front of him. Not in the circle. He couldn't see it, exactly, but he could see a displacement in the air around it… if that makes any sense.

And then, all at once, he could see it.

The creature shimmered, and when Stiles blinked, suddenly it was standing there, looking vaguely bored. The creature was dressed in a Victorian, blue overcoat with gold buttons and long coat-tails. He had white stockings and shiny black shoes, and his hair was white as Foxfire, slicked back and waving slightly as if he was underwater. He was maybe in his mid-twenties. He had large, unearthly slitted eyes and a thin, powdered face with a tightly puckered mouth. He smiled needle-like fangs beneath those ruddy lips.

Stiles was caught between wanting to burst out laughing and crying. In fact, he thought he did burst out laughing. And then he was crying a second later.

He rushed at the creature, pipe raised, and swung for its neck with all his might. But the pipe passed through him and Stiles stumbled to the floor, carried by his momentum. In the dirt, Stiles tried to stand, but his head was aching and he couldn't breathe and everything was spinning around. He fell to his hands and knees. "What's, what's happening-"

The creature looked down at him with his hands clasped behind its back. "Goodness gracious," it said. It had a strange accent. It was almost British, but with a tinge of something else Stiles didn't recognize. "All that effort and it wasn't even iron." With a fluid grace, the creature knelt down next to Stiles and patted his head almost kindly. It picked up Stiles's pipe and it dissolved into nothing, and Stiles scrambled backward. "I admire the spirit, however. Very naughty indeed." It smiled at him again with those horrible fangs.

Stiles trembled. "W-what do you want?"

The creature cocked its head. "You don't know? Ah yes, of course. The curse of reason is still upon you, I suppose. No matter." Its eyes did not soften, but it patted his head again gently. "I am here to fetch you home again."

Stiles didn't know what that meant. He couldn't even start to try to understand that. All he could think was that the pipe hadn't even been iron and now he was sprawled in the dirt with Edward Scissorhands and it was… it was... really funny.

Light flickered in the creature's eyes. It looked up at the sun and sighed. "Off we go, then."

"Wait, wait-!"

"Hush. This will only hurt a little."

With no more warning, the creature pulled back and plunged its hand directly into the center of Stiles's chest.

That's right.

Stiles choked.

His brain fizzled and he thought I should be in pain right now.

Then the world narrowed.

He looked down. The creature had its hand in his chest, although he wasn't bleeding. Its fingers closed around something and it  _pulled_.

Then the end of the world was blinding, intoxicatingly white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AH! poor stiles :(


	4. Chapter 4

Scott couldn’t believe it. He refused to.

But how could he not?

The sun had disappeared beneath the dip of the earth ages ago and he was still here, completely alone.

Well, not entirely alone.

He should check on his friends. He should make sure Lydia was okay. He should make sure they were just asleep and not something worse. But he couldn’t move. The most terrible thing he had ever seen played in this mind over and over and over and-

Scott dropped to his knees.

_ It happened so quickly. _

After they left Stiles with Deaton, Scott and the girls had followed the charm for a long while. It took them in circles for nearly two hours. It wasn’t very consistent and sometimes it would just drop and dangle for several minutes until it ‘picked up the scent’ or something. It was frustrating. It was taking forever. They were irritated at the situation and irritated at each other as a result. T hey were tromping through the woods, and Lydia was complaining loudly about her shoes getting muddy when Scott finally saw something promising.

“... should have worn pants, dummy.” That was Malia. “Shoes and skirts… only going to get you eaten if you have to run.”

Lydia glared at Malia and Scott could feel the heat of it even though he was ahead of them. He suppressed a smile. They had  _ all _ tried to convince Lydia to wear something practical on excursions like this at one point or another. She had yet to listen. He thought she probably found comfort in it. You could only take so much  _ weirdness _ before your head exploded. Stiles informed Scott at some point that fashion was this ‘anchor’ to her, and Scott guessed Stiles would know better than he did. Stiles probably knew Lydia better than Lydia knew herself. So fine, fashion was Lydia’s anchor. Maybe like lacrosse was to Scott. Or, gosh, like  _ Stiles  _ was to Scott. The whole world could start bleeding black and screaming, but Stiles was always going to be there with that dumb grin of his and a stupid joke and a new adventure that would get them both in trouble.

Scott paused as something caught his eye. A mushroom.

A weirdly large mushroom. Scott could have used it for an armchair.

“So… that’s weird.” Kira muttered.

Scott nodded, pursing his lips. “Fae have a thing with mushrooms, don’t they?”

“A bit,” Kira nodded. She was walking next to him. “I did some research. Uh, a  _ lot _ of research on Celtic mythology and Fae and all that sort of thing, in general, this morning. Mushroom rings are considered to be signs of Fae nearby, so, I guess that's a connection?”

Scott hummed, and they kept walking in the direction the charm pulled.

“It’s actually kind of sad,” Kira continued.

Scott glanced at her. “What is?”

Kira shrugged. “I was reading about all this lore, right? And you can see this… it’s this veiled sort of cruelty in it all.”

Scott didn’t know what she meant, but he liked when she talked about things she was interested in. Her eyes lit up and she was so darn adorable. “What do you mean?”

Kira thought for a moment. “It’s like… for selkies. They’re these stories about seals that can turn into women. And if a man keeps her fur coat hidden, he can force her to marry him and stay on land. They had all these methods to see whether or not a woman was a selkie or not, and I can just imagine how horrible things might end up, you know, in the real world? Some husband’s wife is getting sick, or maybe she’s trapped in an abusive relationship, but does anyone help her? No, they determine that she’s a selkie and actually just a liar and  _ what a good job that man did in capturing her _ and it’s all just…” Kira shivered. “It’s very sad. And that’s not even the worse thing! They were suspicious of their  _ babies _ , Scott. They’d do all these tests to their children if they weren’t right. If they were deformed or slow or too adult-like or too distracted…” She trailed off and pulled her jacket tighter to her. “Do you know what I mean? It’s sick. How many of those poor children were just a little outside of the cultural norm...”

Scott nodded. “That sounds awful.” And it was awful. It was horrible.  “Course,” he continued, “who knows how many of those things are real. I mean, if Fae and werewolves and fox spirits are real...”

Kira huffed. “Even  _ if _ there were things like selkies, they didn’t have the right to accuse people like that. To hurt people like that.”

This was something wonderful about Kira. She was so soft spoken and nervous, but she had these convictions and they were noble and pure and  _ good _ . There were so many things in the world that were not, Scott felt like he had found a diamond buried in a pebble beach.

Scott was about to respond, but the charm pulled more insistently. He continued faster. He thought he knew where they were headed now, and a moment later, they cleared the underbrush and cut clean into the clearing at the tip of a cliff. The lookout point.

“Look around,” Scott waved everyone off, and they did just that. Was this the place? He pulled his phone out and called Stiles. Stiles didn’t answer. He hadn’t been answering for a while now, which was kind of weird. Usually, Stiles was a quick texter.

Chewing his lip, Scott tried again. Still no answer. Maybe Stiles’s phone was dead. He tended to do that. He was constantly forgetting to charge his phone.

Sighing, Scott re-pocketed his phone and looked up.

That’s when he first smelled it. There was a crackle in the air. It smelled like rain and rust and lightning, and something sickeningly sweet, maybe syrup or cake. Scott looked up. The sun would set soon, but there was no sign of rain in sight.

This had to be the spot.

“Do you smell that?” Malia asked him, her nose wrinkled.

Scott nodded. He tried to pull his phone out again, but it caught in the zipper and skidded to the floor. He chased after it and ended up closer to the lookout.

The earth shook. Just a bit.

Lydia shifted her weight uneasily. “Was that an earthquake?”

“I doubt it,” Kira muttered.

It was silent. Scott quietly took out his claws and hunched, anticipant. On the floor, there were so many mushrooms, you could hardly see the dirt between them. They formed interlocking circles. The ground rumbled again and Scott raised a hand. Kira, Lydia, and Malia all stood slightly behind him. Everyone was tense and cocked, like arrows in a drawn bow. “Steady…”

Malia growled lowly. Kira took her sword out of its sheath.

The earth shook again, and this time it didn't stop. Trees fell behind them, dirt and rocks fell off the edge of the cliff.

There was a ringing in Scott’s ears.

And then, like a balloon suddenly popped, Scott’s phone rang. He scrambled for it. About time… “Finally, Stiles! I’ve been calling you forever! Where are you-”

**“No time! I think this is a trap! Something is a trap, Scott! You’ve got to get away, okay! Where are you?”**

Stiles sounded terrified and that made  _ Scott _ terrified. What was going on? “What? What are you talking ab-”

**“** **_Where are you?_ ** **”**

Scott stumbled on his words. Through the phone, he could hear crashing trees. “The charm led us to the lookout point at the edge of town! We’re there now!” As he spoke, his attention suddenly caught on the edge of the cliff, the mushrooms shook and suddenly froze solid, covered in ice. One minute, there was nothing there, the next, something wiped through the air and Scott  _ knew _ . “Something is- there’s-” The ringing in his ears grew louder and he gasped in pain. The phone fell to his feet and he clasped hands around his ears.

There was  _ something _ around him. Somewhere, somewhere-

“Hey!” Scott shouted. “Show yourself!” He could hardly think over these  _ ringing bells. _

The winds brushed Scott’s arm, and he lashed out, touching nothing.

Suddenly, Lydia shouted. She flew through the air and slammed against a tree, falling unconscious to the ground.

Scott growled, his fangs growing in his mouth. The thing came again, slamming into Malia. Malia shrieked and skidded dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, but she clawed herself to a stop and threw herself back at the invisible thing. She landed on its back and Scott jumped toward it as well, ready to slice at its stomach, but just as suddenly as it was there, it was not. Malia dropped to the ground, and the thing… it  _ tapped _ Scott on the shoulder.

Scott spun around, claws ripping the air.

Nothing.

Kira was next to go out. The thing battled against her sword with something Scott couldn’t see, and for a moment it almost seemed to be loosing. Kira backed it against a tree, drew back her blade- and suddenly a branch from the tree reached down and yanked the blade out of her hands. It flew over the edge of the cliff, and the tree branch smacked Kira across the face. She fell to the ground, still.

While this was going on, Scott was busy battling invisible hands. They tapped him on the shoulder, keyed through his hair, patted him on the head. The thing laughed and the sound rattled Scott’s teeth.

Once Kira was out, Malia and Scott were back to back, lashing out at any ghost of a wind.

‘ _ Enough,’ _ rumbled a voice. It sounded like the wind touching the trees. Scott still couldn’t see it, but the thing was right in front of him. He could smell it. Before he could attack, the thing grabbed his arms and pulled them both behind him, holding him still with a grip like ice. A second later, Malia was punched out by a massive tree limb. The creature whispered in his ear. ‘ _ We are here for our own, wolf. This does not concern you.’ _

Scott snarled. “You attacked my friends! It does now!”

‘ _ You were in the way,’  _ it responded like that was a type of explanation. ‘ _ We are looking for a boy. He would have been born April 8th, 1995. Dark hair… Problematic. Fate says you are important to him.’ _

Scott’s heart skipped a beat and the creature chuckled, it vibrated in his throat. ‘ _ I see you do know him. Good.’ _

Scott knew someone who fit those parameters, but it wouldn’t be  _ him _ . There had to be hundreds of teenagers that fit that description. Scott didn’t get a chance to think this information through, however. ‘ _ You do not need to speak of it. Fate has already brought him here.’ _

Scott’s stomach dropped to the floor. He struggled harder and the creature’s nails dug into his wrists. Hot blood dripped into Scott’s clenched fist. His phone. He’d told Stiles where they were! No, no, no!

The creature continued to laugh, and a moment later, Scott caught the scent of Stiles’s panic. He was running. Right toward the worst possible place, he could be.

‘ _ Hush’ _ said the creature. It put a hand over Scotts mouth, and Scott’s fangs retracted into his mouth out of no impulse of his own. It tightened its icy grip.

Seconds later, Stiles came stumbling into the clearing, looking half mad. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and his shirt was bloodstained. He looked around, and, to Scott’s horror, his eyes slid right over Scott. Stiles didn’t see him. He didn’t see any of them!

Stiles walked toward the edge of the cliff, nearly tripping clumsily on a root, but otherwise unconcerned. He called their names and Scott could do  _ nothing. _ As Stiles neared the center of the mushroom circles, the frost on the mushrooms began to melt. They leaned in toward Stiles, and Scott could do nothing but stare in confusion and shock as a soft ethereal glow began to emanate from… well, from  _ Stiles _ .

What was going on? What was this thing  _ doing  _ to him?! Why couldn’t things just leave his friend alone! There was a deep rooted terror in Scott’s belly. Not just a terror, a great need more present than anything else. He  _ couldn’t _ let this happen. No one was going to hurt Stiles. Not anymore!

Stiles was his  _ brother _ . Stiles stepped into gasoline with him. Stiles was at every heartbreak and victory. Stiles was every childhood adventure and every great secret. Stiles was  _ everything  _ and some delusional being was  _ not _ going to take him away... He'd just got him back.

Scott growled, quiet at first, and them louder. Without warning, he lashed back at the creature in desperation, biting its hand with his (unfortunately human) teeth. For a second, the creature jerked back, and that was all Scott needed. “ _ STILES-” _

The creature let Scott go, but something still bound Scott to the place he stood. He couldn’t move no matter how he struggled. “ _ STILES,”  _ he screamed. “ _ STILES RUN!” _

And Stiles heard him. He whipped around, and his eyes widened when they met Scott’s.

He could see now.

After that, things got blurry. Scott pulled and pulled. Why wasn’t Stiles  _ running? _ He stood in that circle and talked to something Scott couldn’t see. Scott couldn’t understand them. He must be confused, maybe it was too far away. But the words coming out of Stiles’s mouth made no logical sense whatsoever.

He’d stood in stunning horror, screaming, when something flew into Stiles’s chest. Stiles’s eyes bulged out, and blood trickled down his chin. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening- “ _ NO _ !”

But it was.

Suddenly, Scott’s restraints broke. He flew toward Stiles. His fingers nearly brushed him, but the world exploded in white light, and when it faded… Stiles… was gone.

And here Scott was now.

* * *

 

Sirens wailed behind him. Doctors were here. Police asked him questions. It was night. He could still see Stiles’s stricken face, his eyes bled of color. Dead. Pale. Dead.

They  _ killed him _ .

Sheriff Stilinski stood in front of Scott.

Scott couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe anymore.

He gasped and choked and someone held him up. He thought it smelled like Kira.

“They killed him,” Scott gasped. “They- they-”

“Scott, look at me-” Stilinski was shaking, his hands tight on the front of Scott’s shirt. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you  _ say that- _ ”

Scott didn’t know when he started crying, but now he was. He sobbed and sobbed and Stilinski shoved him away and went screaming away in the woods, shouting Stiles’s name over and over into the night. Because he  _ couldn’t be dead. _

“I let him die,” Scott choked. He was on the floor now. Officers tried to speak to him but he didn’t know where they went now. Blue, red, white lights. Lydia’s red hair on a stretcher.

_ Stiles is dead. _

“No, you didn’t.” It was Mom now. His mother wrapped her arms around him, her hands in his hair. She pulled him into her and held him tight. “You did not.” With his face pressed into her, her could feel her shaking. Her hot tears landed on the back of his neck.

Scott didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t a way to stop it all. He didn’t know what to  _ do! _ He wasn’t the planner. Stiles was! Stiles was the one in the sandbox figuring out how to hide from the teacher. Stiles punched the bullies at school and got back Scott’s inhaler. Stiles was there when his dad crashed Scott’s birthday. Scott went with Stiles to the graveyard that held the worst thing in Stiles’s world. Scott and Stiles were going to be roommates in college. They were going to get a flat in a big city and watch tv and eat pizza and fight crime and get old and their kids were going to play together and and...

Stiles wasn’t allowed to die.

Then again, Stiles never followed the rules.

* * *

Stiles woke up feeling like he’d just been told the funniest joke on the planet. He snickered and opened his eyes and sat up, unconcerned. He laughed a bit more, liking the way it moved in his chest and bubbled around in his head. Gosh, something really bad had happened, hadn’t it?

Where was he?

Stiles looked around the room. He couldn’t see very clearly, and he didn’t know why. Everything was fuzzy around the edges, glowing with a chaotic energy that ought to have made him nervous, but didn’t. The walls around him were made of dirt, however, this was not a hovel. It was a house made into the ground, but it was trim and proper, with a hard-packed floor and nice pink curtains and a daisy flower garden just outside. A table grew out of the floor, made of smooth wooden roots, and the little house had a door going to other rooms in the house. There was a cherry fireplace that crackled various colors, and hung above it were some drying clothes along with various herbs and some magic rune carvings and a bloody wax doll and- wait, what?

Stiles blinked.

And the events of the last hours came rushing back to him. He jumped up out of the pile of blankets he’d been lying in, and padded cautiously to the door. This whole ‘escape’ thing was getting repetitive. Was he dead? Was this heaven? Were his friends okay?

“Stuck in the freaking Shire. Nice job, Stiles. Provoke the angry Fae dude. Walk right into a stupid  _ portal _ . Absolutely wonderful.”

_ Where the actual dogs balls was he? _ He came up to the window and squinted to see above the daisies outside. It almost looked like it was summer. Which was... impossible. It was Halloween. Had he been taken somewhere down south? That said,  _ why _ was he taken? Was he a hostage of some kind? If so, why wasn’t he tied up?

He tried the door. It was locked.

Okay, he hadn’t expected anything else really. He tried to push open the window, but something vibrated against his skin when he went to touch the glass. It felt like the static you feel when you hold your hand near a TV screen, but slightly more intense and… solid. He knew instantly that there was no way he could get through the glass, although he didn’t know  _ how _ he knew that. He pulled back.

Stiles wondered if he’d been drugged, or  _ was _ drugged. Because as he wandered around the room, picking at nick-knacks on the walls, boredly surveying the tranquil atmosphere, he felt this pressure, deep in his chest, to start giggling. He wanted to throw his head back and laugh and dash things into walls and step on broken glass and it was  _ really _  weird to be thinking this way. The only thing keeping him from doing exactly that was this nagging  _ What The HeCk _ in the back of his brain which insisted it was not normal.

Wait. Stiles’s hand flew to his chest as images flashed through his mind. Jack Frost dude put his hand through him! He was sure of it! He pulled back his shirt and looked down at his torso. He was fine. It looked as if nothing had happened.

“Okay, so just _magic_ disembowelment. O-okay. I guess I’ll take that.” Smoothing down the fabric with a shudder, Stiles turned toward the fireplace and realized that the clothes hanging on hooks in front of that fire were his.  He, in fact, was wearing some type of loose cotton clothing that belonged in a low-budget historical film along with a well fitted deep green victorian coat that flared out at the edges like leaves. It felt posh and entitled, a bit like Dr. Strange. He was in different clothes, so that must have meant someone…”Ew,” Stiles muttered. He snatched his underwear down from the fireplace and put them on. No one else needed to know about his Batman underwear, thank you very much. The rest of his clothing dripped water to the floor. Maybe they’d washed it?

What kind of freaky kidnappers washed their victims clothes for them?  _ Annie Wilkes,  _ his brain supplied, to which Stiles physically recoiled. No, he was going to get out of here. He wasn’t gonna take time playing with psychos. No way. He had his own two feet and he wasn’t starving or thirsty or… actually, it was kind of weird how good he felt.

“Fairies,” Stiles said out loud. “I’ve been kidnapped by  _ Fairies _ .” And they’d dressed him like a little toy! Was this some kind of sick joke?

He sat down at the table with a huff and buried his face in his hands. There was a glass vase full of flowers on the center, and the movement of Stiles’s stretched reflection caught his eye.

He stared. Blinked rapidly and then rubbed his eyes. No. No, it was still there.

Stiles leaned in closer and closer to the lamp until his nose almost touched the glass. Stiles wouldn’t have said that he had incredibly interesting eyes. They were just sort of brown and average and he guessed they worked fine, so he didn’t have anything to complain about. But that was now a thing of the past.

His eyes were bright silver, glittering and sitted, like a cats. Like a  _ Fae’s _ . Stiles pulled away slowly. What did they do to him? Why would they do that?

Behind him, the door eased open.

Stiles turned, his chair falling backward, and he grabbed the vase reflexively. Maybe he was planning on throwing it.

But instead, he just stood there, confused.

A young man stood in the doorway, nervously bouncing on his heels. He had dusty hair that might have been blonde at some point but now faded to a light brown. He was a good head and a half shorter than Stiles, maybe fifteen years old?

He looked Stiles up and down and paused at the vase in Stiles’s hands. Stiles put the vase down hastily.

“Can…” the boy started. “Can you understand me?”

Stiles raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah?”

The boy smiled. There was something familiar about him that Stiles couldn’t place. He  _ looked _ human, and Stiles got the impression that the kid didn’t mean him any harm, but nothing was what it seemed to be lately. On a side note, the boy looked directly into Stiles’s eyes and wasn’t particularly concerned (which any normal human would be??). The boy smiled at him. There was something in his face that Stiles didn’t like; a manic intensity brimming under the surface. A madness. “Oh. Good! I guess that means it's working!”

“...What’s working?”

The boy grimaced. “Are you hungry? I get hungry now. I guess maybe you still do?”

Okay. That didn’t sound good at all. Stiles took a step forward and the boy jerked back behind the door. “That’s a bad idea. Don’t move”

“Okay.” Stiles raised his hands. “Alright. I won't. Look, this is just a shot in the dark, but is this some kind of illusion? All of this?” He gestured around him. “Am I really locked in some torture cellar? Because I’ve been there, done that, and it's frankly insulting to assume that I  _ can’t _ recognize an illusion.”

The boy blinked. “N... what was the question?”

“Is this an illusion?”

“Ah!” The boy laughed for maybe too long. “No. It’s not.”

Stiles frowned. “Kid, don’t lie to me.”

Now the boy just looked confused. “I can’t… why would I… do you mean for me to say a non-truth?”

What.

“I could not do such a thing. The madness is still on me.”

“The madness? W- _What_ are you talking about?”

The boy opened his mouth, but as he did, a long, white gloved hand carefully rested on his shoulder from behind him. The boy’s mouth snapped shut. Stiles’s stomach went cold.

“I believe we agreed you would not go into our guest’s room, Ulliam.”

Ulliam smiled tightly. “I am not in our guest’s room.” He looked down pointedly at his bare feet, which were just beyond the doorway.

The figures grip tightened on Ulliam’s shoulder, and then loosened. “Run along, child.”

Ulliam slipped into the dark hallway as smooth as a liquid, and in his place stepped the creature in the blue coat from earlier. It was still buttoned up and posh like he was going to a victorian ball.

Stiles backed up, putting the table between him and the creature. The Fae walked into the room and stared at him impassively. “You look horrible, brother.”

Stiles raised an eyebrow. “So I’m gonna assume you mean brother like, bro, fam, my dude-”

“I mean exactly what I say,” said the creature. “I am called Mister. You do not know me because the curse of reason is still upon you.” The creature, _ Mister _ or whatever (honestly what kind of name was that?), looked him up and down as a scientist might look at a particularly interesting tumor. “You are curious like this. Humanity does not suit you.”

Stiles stared at him, vaguely horrified. “I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”

“That would be impossible,” Mister said simply. He came closer, and the hairs on Stiles’s arms stood on end. He smelled like rain and metal and bitter electricity. “You are confused.”

“Ya  _ think _ ? What do you want? Whatever it is, Scott wouldn’t want you to take-”

Mister raised his hand, and Stiles’s throat closed up. Mister cocked his head, bewildered, apparently paying no mind to Stiles’s increasingly purple face. “I have not encountered any Scotts in nearly a millennium.”

Stiles’s brain buzzed. He couldn’t  _ breathe. _ A second later, his throat opened again. He stumbled into the table, coughing and gasping. His hands trembled. He closed them into fists. This  _ thing _ it could do whatever it wanted. How did you compete with a creature like that? “Not- Not  _ Scotts _ .  _ Scott _ . My friend.”

“Ah.” Mister clasped his hands. “Yes. The True Alpha. A worthy companion for one of the fae. He fought well.”

Stiles glared at the creature, his lip curling. “If you-”

“He is uninjured.” Mister gave him a disapproving look. He padded to the fireplace and crouched in front of it. He snapped and the fire changed to a bright blue before settling down again. “Werewolves are hearty creatures,” Mister said. He clenched his fist and the fire died instantly. “Like cockroaches…”

Stiles suppressed a shiver and forced himself to stand tall. He wouldn’t let this LARP wannabe scare him. When Mister turned around, he walked back to Stiles and came closer and closer until his long nose nearly touched Stiles’s.

Stiles would have stepped back, but the table was behind him. “H-how do I know you’re not lying?”

Mister blinked once, very slowly. He chuckled. “Humans do not know much of us as they used to. If you lived in a proper time, you would have been taught from infancy, Fae cannot lie.”

Stiles processed that. It wasn’t proof that Scott was uninjured, but he doubted he was going to get any more information than that. He doubted Mister had taken the time to remember anything else. 

“You said Scott would ‘not let me take it’.”

Stiles blinked a few times, scrambling to remember what Mister meant. “Never heard or personal space, huh?” he said weakly.

Mister waited.

So Stiles cleared his throat. “Yeah. Scott, Scott wouldn’t want you to take whatever you want.”

Mister raised a single white eyebrow. “Indeed. True enough. But, despite what he may desire. I have brought you home anyway.”

Without warning, Mister pulled back and swung to the door. He paused at the exit. “You are free to roam the house. I will not imprison you here.”

Stiles blinked, and the doorway was empty. There was no sign that he had been there but for the tell-tale scent of rain. The door was open.

Stiles was just more confused.


	5. Chapter 5

So it turned out the reason wannabe Jolley Iceman let Stiles go wherever he wanted was because of this whole…  _ place _ consisted of a mile or so of forest and little underground houses covered in mossy grass. That was it. That was the whole world, as far as Stiles could tell.

The minute Mister left, Stiles darted out of the door after him. He was barefoot but he didn’t think about it. As quickly as possible, he snuck down a root-intertwined hallway lit by blue candlelight, passing by several doors that opened up into large banquet rooms, kitchens, (a pool??), an entire dance complete with a man similar to Mister playing a violin gorgeously as hundreds of people in Victorian dress twirled around him with impossible grace. Stiles was so enthralled by the sight, he almost walked in. He stopped at the doorway and shook himself. No, he needed to get out of here.

Turning away, Stiles continued until he reached a simple wooden door. He opened it up, and the world turned sideways suddenly, as gravity did something very strange to his head. He stepped outside, and immediately looked _down_ at the door. The hallway inside was deeply sloped and the door was nearly flat, raised slightly by a mossy, hobbit-hole-like mound. Stiles screwed his eyes shut, shook himself, and kept going. Magic. It was just magic and magic was weird.  
He ran the rest of the way, past pretty lakes filled with gold and silver swans, aspen trees, a large amount of vaguely amused, victorian clad creatures Stiles had to assume were also Fae. To his surprise, there was a good amount of humans (as far as he could tell) wandering around as well. A young lady in bell-bottom pants and flowers in her hair talked with a humanoid tree and she waved at Stiles with the tips of her fingers. There was a dazed look in her eyes. In all the human’s eyes. A man at a lakeside looked like he’d been fishing for days, his beard overgrown, his clothes dirty, littered in leaves.

Stiles wondered where the boy he’d talked to had gone. But he kept going. He’d reach the edge of this  _ weirdness _ eventually, right? He’d hit a highway and then he could run to a town and then he could call home and…

Stiles frowned

Had he passed that house before?

He slowed and then stopped. He looked back the way he’d come, through the trees, and then back at the little mound with a door and a window and daisies growing all around it. This was… this was the house he’d come out of. Stiles cursed quietly. Of course. The creature wouldn’t  _ really _ just let him leave. There was no one around and the forest was eerily quiet.

“It’s funny, huh? How it goes round and round?”

Stiles looked up, and seeing no one, spun in a circle. Suddenly something knocked him in the head. “Ow!” He looked up again.

Above him, in a small oak tree, sat the boy from earlier. He grinned cheekily and tried to drop another acorn on him. Stiles swatted it away. “Hey- hey, quit it!”

The boy, (his name started with a U or something, Stiles thought) laughed. He laughed so hard, he flipped backward, and Stiles nearly had a heart attack, but the boy caught himself and hung upside down. His face danged just a bit above Stiles. “Who are you?”

Stiles blinked. “Uh… we met earlier? Don’t you remember?”

The boy scrunched up his nose. Something passed over him, and the manic energy in his eyes eased. “Oh,” he said. “You.”

“Yes. Yes, me. Do you know what’s going on here? What’s wrong with everyone?”

The boy, (what was his  _ name _ ? Stiles couldn’t remember.) only looked confused. “There is nothing wrong with us. We are merely mad and you are reasonable.”

“That… that is the  _ definition  _ of wrong.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You-” Stiles growled. He couldn’t argue with someone like this. Especially with someone upside down. He took a deep breath. “Do you know why Mister took me here?”

The boy went very serious then. He pulled himself up onto the branch and slid down the tree. He crossed his arms. “He took you home.”

“He said that... You don’t sound happy about it.”

The boy shook his head. “You’re here now, so it means I have to leave.”

Stiles frowned. “You have to leave… to where?”

The boy sighed and sat down on the grass. Stiles followed suit. “Back to the mortal realm. I won’t even  _ remember- _ ” Suddenly, the boy’s eyes filled his tears, and he swiped them away irritably. “Look,” He gestured at his eyes. “ _ this _ is Reason. It is so… It  _ hurts. _ ” The boy took a deep breath and then scowled at Stiles. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that I’m human and you’re not.”

Stiles almost missed that last bit. He might have wanted to. His muscles tightened under him, suddenly overwhelmed to kick the boy and tell him to shove stupid thoughts like that  _ right back into his little nasty- _

Stiles blinked.

“I’m sorry,  _ what _ ?”

The boy glared. “You are so dull. Aren’t reasonable ones supposed to be  _ smart _ ?”

“I don’t know  _ what you are talking about? _ ”

The boy spoke slowly, like Stiles was a very dumb piece of wood. “I am human. Mister not like grown human like me because my madness is rubbing off. Mister want his dumb brother back now that brother is all grown up and didn’t  _ die _ like Fae kids  _ usually do. _ ”

Stiles rocked back. “And Mister… Mister thinks  _ I’m _ his brother.”

“ _ I’m _ his brother! And… you are his brother too.” The boy threw his hands in the air and made to stand up, but Stiles jerked forward and grabbed his arm. The boy stopped. He sat back down, glowering. “None of this matters. Tonight the curse will pass back to me and then you’ll remember.”

Stiles shook his head. “You’re wrong. I’m not-” He laughed, but his stomach was so tight, the sound came out shakily. “I’m human. Like,  _ being the human one _ is kinda my thing.”

The boy just gave him a put-upon glare. “I still cannot lie, so I do not see why you will not believe me.”

“What do you mean? What do you mean, you can’t lie? You just said you’re not a Fae.”

“Only those with the curse of reason can lie.”

“And…” Stiles’s heart was going a million miles an hour. “And you’re saying this- this  _ curse _ is going to pass from me to you-”

“It already is-”

“Okay fine, whatever. So its passing from me to you and what, I’ll be  _ insane _ once you have all my reason?”

The boy shrugged. “ _ Mad _ , yes.”

Well, great.

Stiles’s brain spun. He needed a plan. He needed a  _ really _ good plan right now. “So how long have we got until I turn into a duckface whatever?”

The boy’s shrugged moodily. “It will finish at sunset. Once the switching ceremony is complete.”

“Kid, you’ve got to believe me- they probably have the wrong guy!”

The boy raised an eyebrow. “If they did, you would be able to say that for certain.”

Stiles blinked. “What?”

“Say it. Say that they have the wrong guy.”

“They probably have the wrong person. I mean,  _ what are the chances- _ ”

“See?” the boy shrugged. “It’s already passed enough to start affecting you. You might not even remember my name.  _ Your  _ name will be next, I guess.”

Stiles’s mouth fell open. He struggled for a second, mouthing the words. He tried to speak, but as he did, the words just… wouldn’t come. What was he trying to say again? “They… they probably could possibly nearly it be likely that they don’t have the right person. Maybe.”

The boy laughed. “Yes. Maybes are good for getting around it. Unfortunately for me, I know my name very well.”

What was the boy's name? Stiles stared at him. “I’ve seen you before,” he said. He felt dizzy.

“Have you?”

“Yeah… you were…” Stiles frowned. “You were in a dream-” He shook his head, trying to clear a frightening cobwebbing that beckoned. There was something in his head. It felt like looking over the edge of a cliff, unable to see the bottom. If he stepped too far, he’d never make it back up again.

He should be panicking. The boy just accused him of something terrifying. He should  _ freak out. _

Stiles…  couldn’t. Not right now. Was it even that big of a deal? Human, not human. Who even cared?

“Hey-” The boy snapped his fingers in front of Stiles’s face, and the world came zooming back. Stiles jumped to his feet and backed away from the boy, breathing quickly.

“Something’s wrong with me…”

“ _ Again _ , with the ‘wrong’-”

“No-” Stiles stopped pacing and pointed at the boy. “You’re crazy. You, you  _ want _ to live here? You know what…” A trickle of a plan made it through Stiles’s fuzzy brain and he latched onto it. “No! That’s right! You don’t want to leave. And I don’t want to stay. Neither of us  _ want _ this, yeah, uh... what’s your… what’s your name?”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Ulliam.”

“Yeah. Ulli...  uh, sorry.  _ Ulliam _ . So, we both don’t want this. Why don’t we help each other out.”

“By this you mean…?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“I mean screw this!” Stiles threw his hands in the air. “I want to go home and you want to stay at your home, so…”

Ulliam was already shaking his head. “This  _ is _ your home. You have… you have Mister and all of the cousins and... I have a family to meet in the mortal world. Once the switching is complete, I won’t remember ever being anywhere else. No one will. They won’t remember anyone but me.”

Stiles refused to believe a single word he just said. He would not! That didn’t make sense. “A family to meet? How long have you been here?”

“Forever,” Ulliam said. “I have my family in the mortal world waiting for me. My mother and my father Noah Stil- Stil…” He blushed. “I dunno know how to say it.”

Stiles knew how to say it. He laughed, brokenly. “Stilinski.”

“Yes! That’s it.”

“Funny. Really funny.” He glowered. “That’s  _ my _ family. My dad.”

The boy’s eyes flicked over Stiles, and for the first time, he seemed hesitant. “I… I did not think you would think of them that way. But… I guess I should have realized, they  _ did _ raise you, human or not…”

Okay, that was enough bull. Stiles was suddenly absolutely furious. He slammed Ulliam against the tree, and the tree shook, acorns dropping around them. “Don’t  _ talk like that- _ ”

Ulliam pursed his lips. He winced against Stiles’s hands, and Stiles suddenly realized what he was doing. He jerked back.

“I-I’m sorry.”

Ulliam brushed himself off, straightening his coat. “It’s okay. It hurts. I understand.” He took a deep breath. “It won’t hurt once your reason is gone.” His eyes brimmed with tears. “It’ll all be okay tonight.” 

* * *

It had been a week maybe. Scott didn’t really remember. Officially, Stiles was missing. He’d been kidnapped by some psycho. An APB was put out for someone with a teen boy, but Scott couldn’t describe what the Fae had looked like. He couldn’t see him clearly enough.

Scott knew better, but he’d looked anyway. Everyone scoured the valley for days on end. Scott didn’t sleep. No one did. They were going to find him. They were going to find him.

They didn’t find him.

But they kept looking. Sheriff Stilinski was still out looking. Scott would be out again tomorrow morning. He was only home because his mother had dragged him here and told him to  _ sleep. _

Despite that, Scott wasn’t sleeping. He sat at his desk chair, looking up at the half moon and trying to think about absolutely nothing. It wasn’t working.

Earlier today, he’d visited the hospital. Lydia hadn’t woken up and with each day that she slept, it became more and more likely that she wouldn’t wake at all. Her eyes were bruised and she looked tense even in her sleep. They’d had to shave part of her hair to stitch up the cut on the back of her head. Scott was sure she’d be furious about that if she woke up.  _ When _ she woke up. Scott had touched her hand and took some of her pain, watching the black ink of it trail up his veins and sizzle inside of him like acid.

“She’s gonna be okay.”

Scott glanced at his bed, where Stiles hung half of his body lazily over the edge. He picked at the carpet and gave Scott a melancholy smile. He wasn’t the Stiles Scott had come to recognize. He was younger and lighter without bags under his eyes, his hair short and his clothes not slept in and wrinkled.  _ Stiles. _ “I mean, she’s  _ Lydia _ . Lydia’s always fine.”

“Yeah?” Scott answered. “Just like you, huh?”

Stiles didn’t reply.

When Scott looked at the bed again, he was gone. Of course, he was. He was never there in the first place.

Scott shouldn’t imagine things like that. It wasn’t healthy. It couldn’t be healthy.

He was going to find Stiles and then he would have the real deal rather than a snarky voice in his mind.

Behind him, the door creaked open, and the hallway light crept into the room. Scott turned. His mom stood in the doorway, arms hugged around her chest. She must have just gotten off work. She hadn’t even had the chance to change into her PJs. “Sweetie, why are you still awake?”

Scott hummed. He turned back and stared out the window. “Any news?”

There wasn’t. Scott knew there wouldn’t be. His mother wrapped her arms around him. “Stiles knew what he was getting into,” she said. Her voice was soft and quiet like the moonlight.

Scott cleared his throat. “I know.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Something tightened inside Scott’s gut. He was the alpha. He was in charge. He shouldn’t have called Stiles. “I know,” he said again.

“No, baby.” Mom crossed in front of him and took him by the shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Scott frowned. “I  _ know. _ ”

“It  _ wasn’t  _ your fault.”

“I- I know.” He’d started out strong, but his voice quavered and when his mother whispered it one more time,  _ it’s not your fault, _ he broke. She hugged him tightly.

“\I should have made him stay away-”

“Shh-”

Melissa pulled back.

Downstairs, someone knocked on the door.

“Who the living indecency knocks on a door right now?” said Stiles.

Scott sat up. He forced himself to breathe normally. He cleared his throat and blinked away the lately ever-present water in his eyes. He was an alpha. He was supposed to be strong. “S-someone’s here.”

“I’ll get it.” Melissa stood and made her way to the door. Scott thought for a moment and then padded after her, sticking to the shadows. His chest was aching and he rubbed at his collarbone. Who would come to the house at two in the morning?

Scott listened from upstairs, ready to act if there was a threat.

Voices murmured, and Scott caught the visitor’s scent. He frowned and came down the rest of the stairs, vaguely aware that he had to look like an absolute mess. He’d been wearing the same shirt for three days now and hadn’t taken a shower in… a long time. Stiles had been jabbing him about it. “You smell like fish, dude.”

“ _ Deaton _ ?”

And there Deaton was. He wore a long coat, looking as haggard as Scott felt. He sported a large bandage wrapped around his bald head. Scott blinked, shocked. He’d honestly forgotten about Deaton entirely. “Doc, what happened to you?”

Deaton chuckled sadly. “I had a tussle a few days ago. Ended up unconscious. Been in the hospital until just now.”

Melissa frowned. “Oh my goodness, I didn’t-”

“Not your hospital, unfortunately, Mrs. McCall. I am a patient at a smaller hospital closer to my home. They released me tonight and I was going to wait until the morning to come, but I didn’t feel this could wait…” Deaton hesitated. “Can I come in?”

“Of course. No one is sleeping here anyhow.” Melissa pulled open the door and they all went into the living room to sit on the couches. Deaton eased himself into an armchair with a wince.

“I am not a hearty as I used to be,” he muttered.

Scott frowned. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I will be.”

They fell silent. And then Melissa spoke. “I suppose you’ve heard about Stiles.”

“Yes.” Deaton nodded gravely. He looked Scott directly in the eyes. “Actually, he is why I am here. I… I do not think that we will ever see Stiles again.”

Scott’s throat closed up.

“Now, hang on-”

“But,” Deaton stopped Melissa’s protests. “Stiles isn’t dead.”

Scott didn’t realize he was puncturing the couch furniture until he heard it rip slightly. He pulled back. “Doc,” his voice didn’t want to work. He had to force himself to speak louder than a whisper. “I saw him die.”

“No.” Deaton shook his head. “You saw something, I am sure. But he isn’t dead.”

A rush of anger flew through Scott, and he gripped the couch tighter. How dare Deaton come in here in the middle of the night and say something so… so… “It stuck something into his  _ chest _ . He was bleeding. He  _ died. _ I. Saw. It.”

“Sweetie, it’s okay.” Mom grabbed his hand. Scott’s anger abated, but it glowered beneath the surface, ready to lash out at any moment.

Meanwhile, Deaton shifted his weight on the chair. His hesitation was palpable in the air. Scott would smell his fear. Fear? Why was he so afraid? “You have to understand, this is a secret I have been keeping for… so long.”

“What secret?” His mother’s voice was cold and hard as stone.

Deaton took a deep breath. He cleared his throat. “I’ll just… Seventeen years ago, I broke my arm.”

“What does that have to do-?”

“Let him speak, Scott.”

Scott held his tongue.

After a moment, Deaton went on. “I was hospitalized briefly because I had to have surgery to set the shattered bones. One of the nights I was there, I was walking around, too wired to sleep. I ended up at the nursery window, looking over the infants. I think I wanted to see if a cousin of mine was in there. My aunt had just had a baby and- that’s beside the point- I was there and the entire hall was empty. It got extremely cold and ice climbed up the window.”

Scott leaned forward, listening intently. 

“I could see the nurse inside the nursery. She was fast asleep in her chair. And all the babies were silent. I tried to open the door when the ground shook, but it was locked. So I banged on the glass, but no one inside responded. I remember I felt this great sense of urgency. It all happened very quickly. One moment there was no one there, and the next, someone slipped through the window. I could hardly see them. They were practically  _ made _ of shadows. The creature glided down the isles of infants, and it took something out of its cloak. It was,” Deaton laughed bitterly, “a baby with glowing, silver eyes. The creature stopped at one of the bassinets, set down his child and picked up the human. There was a flash of light, and then he was gone with human baby. The baby he left looked completely human now and the whole hospital came back to life. The lights came on, people walked into the hall. I was stunned. It was like a dream. The chances that I happened to be there, to witness it, were so astronomical...”

“What did you do?” Mom said. Scott admired his mother for that. She didn’t doubt for a second thing, opting for action like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Deaton gave her a helpless sort of look. “What could I possibly do? Tell the hospital an invisible man kidnapped a baby and replaced him with an identical kid? How likely was  _ that _ to work? As soon as I was out of the hospital, I looked for the child, of course. I spent  _ weeks  _ researching and trying to trace where the child could have gone. But… I found nothing. The boy was gone and there was another child in his place.”

The gears in Scott’s mind spun. He didn’t really want to know where this was going. “And who was the missing baby?”

Deaton chewed his lip. “ Mieczysław Stilinski.”

Scott might have been impressed by the correct pronunciation of Stiles’s given name if he wasn’t so horrified. He sat back slowly. No. No, that couldn’t be true.

Melissa was still confused. She raised her hands. “Wait, wait, wait,  _ what _ ? I thought you didn’t find the baby!”

Deaton frowned. “I didn’t.”

Melissa started to speak. She stopped. Scott could see comprehension dawn behind her eyes. She sucked in a breath and her hands tightened into fists. The silence that followed was like a stone hung around their necks.

Kira’s words echoed in Scott’s mind. ...  _ they were suspicious of their babies...  _ It was all clicking into place and Scott felt sick. “You’re saying... the Stiles we know” 

“is the baby the Fae left behind.” Deaton nodded gravely. “Children like Stiles are called changelings.”

Melissa dropped her head into her hands and cursed.

Deaton kept going, like he wasn’t tearing Scott’s apart. “Apparently Fae children hardly ever survive childhood. When Fae think that their own are going to die, they sometimes steal human babies and leave their dying children in their place. Maybe it is out of grief. Maybe it is superficial...”

“But Stiles didn’t die.” Scott didn’t know why he was even considering this. He didn’t want to believe it. He  _ couldn’t _ believe it.

“Exactly.  I have done extensive research, and I knew it might be a possibility they would come back for him. I tried to keep him away when I saw the signs, but he wouldn’t listen to me. So they came to take him… home.”

This was  _ so outside _ of Scott’s comprehension, even contemplating it felt like drowning. This was insane. It was  _ utterly mad. _ Stiles was…  _ Stiles.  _ He was funny and clumsy and smart and  _ human. _

“What about the original child?” Melissa asked. She still had her face in her hands, kneading her forehead. Her eyes were on the floor and her shoulders were tense like she wanted to jump to her feet.

Deaton shook his head. “I don’t know. The stories are inconclusive. Sometimes the child is returned, sometimes they die from neglect. The fae are… chaotic. They have no social masks, no obligations. If they have a conscience at all, it is sorely lacking development. They do what they want when they want, and their magic makes it so that they can.”  _ Like children with machine guns _ , Scott thought.

Scott shivered. Part of him was beyond elated. If what Deaton was saying was true, then that meant that Stiles was alive. He was okay. And yeah, maybe Scott wouldn’t see him again, but that was so much better than Stiles being dead. People like Stiles weren’t meant to die. They were too filled with energy and motion and personality to lie still forever. The other part of Scott was horrified.

“But Stiles isn’t like that. He’s- he’s a good person.”

“Of course,” Deaton conceded. “He was raised by exceptionally good people. Not to mention, I believe the fae must have done  _ something _ to him to make him… more... human.” Maybe Deaton knew how awful that sounded because he ducked his head slightly.

Melissa muttered more curses under her breath. “This is worse than him just…”  _ just dying. _ Scott didn’t know. Was an insane Stiles better than a dead Stiles?  _ Yes,  _ he thought.  _ Absolutely. _ His hands were shaking, and he pulled them under his knees. All at once, he jumped to his feet and paced. Mom looked up, concerned. “Scott-”

“I just-” Scott grabbed his hair in his hands. “I just… I need to think.” He grabbed his jacket off a hook and started toward the door. No one stopped him when he slammed the door shut. Stiles stood on the front porch, arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. Scott scowled at him. As he raced to his bike, he could still hear Deaton talking softly to his mom.

_ “You can see why I didn’t tell anyone? If he’s fae again the Stiles that we know is gone, and I would pray that he  _ never  _ comes back to Beacon Hills.” _


	6. Chapter 6

“It’s been real, guys, but I really need to get back to Beacon Hills, actually.”

Stiles only reaped a few bemused smiles in response. Wonderful.

It was evening, and the bleeding sunset lasted far longer than it ought to have. Stiles still didn’t have a plan.

After his argument/conversation/fight with Ulliam, Stiles spent several hours roaming the area the magic loop-thingy would let him. He tried talking to the other humans, but none of them seemed to understand what he was saying. One man took a fish out of his pocket and proceeded to eat it like an apple (what a way to end a conversation, though. A real show-stopper.) Stiles didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t like not knowing what to do. Time slipped and slid through his fingers. Stiles had no idea how long he’d been walking around this large prison. He got the feeling this place was much larger than he could see. It beckoned in dark shadows and begged him to walk through the trees onward into eternity. It was a feeling like the sickening sweet of eating too much dessert. Stiles was almost grateful that Mister’s magic kept bringing him back. He could get lost here in an instant.

At some point, Stiles came to himself. He didn’t realize how long he’d spent with his mind floating somewhere above him, leaving him content to throw rocks at a funny, ugly creature across a lake. “Yeah, screw you! I can’t  _ see  _ because your dumb, toadstool body is blocking my entire vision  _ figuratively _ !”

He blinked, startled at the sound of his own voice, and suddenly realized that he was terrorizing a wooden stump.

A… Stump.

He threw another rock at it and cocked his head when the rock bounced off and plopped into the water.

“Okay, so we’re going crazy, Stiles. Not like this isn’t unfamiliar territory, I guess. Just  _ chillax _ . Let the wind take you-  _ No!” _ He spun around and grabbed his hair in his hands. “Get a grip. You can’t get out of here if you’re stuck talking to trees, dummy.” Stiles snorted. A giggle bubbled up in his throat. “Who cares? Trees are alive, aren’t they? Not great conversationalists but, ya know, everyone has their flaws-”

An icy hand wrapped around Stiles’s wrist and held tight. The sensation snapped him out of it.

It was Mister. Mister gave him a sad sort of look. “Madness does not mix well with reason. I apologize for the transition, but it is necessary. Once you are one or the other, things will be fine.”

“That is _not_ my definition of _fine,_ _Mister_!” he shrieked. “Hey, let go of me!”

Mister didn’t let go of him. Instead, he started walking, dragging Stiles behind him. Stiles kept up a running commentary of how pissed off he was about this whole situation, and Mister refused to reply.

“You know, you remind me of a buddy of mine. Well, not a buddy. More like a guy who doesn't want to kill us usually. He’s all into the ‘brooding mysterious’ thing too. You guys could meet each other! You’d probably start a brooding club. Stand and stare at each other or whatever Derek- ow, okay you’re skin is really freaking cold, and you’re holding me kinda tight-”

“If I loosened my grip, you would run away,” Mister said.

Stiles grimaced. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘run away’. Walk really fast in a direction far from you? … Maybe. But I wouldn’t  _ run. _ ”

Mister glared at him.

“Okay, shutting up now.”

Mister pulled him through the forest, and soon the trees lost their leaves. It was dark and roots grew out of the ground like desperate hands reaching for air. An owl flew past. They kept going deeper into the wood. Would Mister kill him? Was that the plan?

It occurred to Stiles suddenly that he could straight up ask him. “Are you going to kill me?”

Mister shook his head. “We are going to rid you of your curse.”

“My  _ humanity, _ you mean,” Stiles spat. “Screw you, frosted flakes. I  _ like _ being human, thanks very much.”

“That is only because you know no different. Being human is very painful, I have heard.” Mister pursed his lips and looked Stiles up and down, not unkindly. “I cannot imagine the pain you have endured, brother.”

Stiles didn’t know how to respond to that. They walked in silence for a period of time which might have been weeks or only minutes, until they came to a clearing bathed in candlelight.

The sun was gone. The night sky sparkled like a dark, bejeweled dress. In the center of the clearing, perhaps thirty Fae danced beneath the stars in bare feet on cracked, overgrown tiles. This was a courtyard at some point, but the forest now nearly reclaimed the stone pillars and tiled floor. The Fae danced to a music Stiles could not hear, dressed in hoop skirts and corsets and painted pale with roguish cheeks. The only sound was the shuffling of starch fabrics. When Mister and Stiles stepped into the clearing, they stilled.

Stiles’s heart pounded in his head. Oddly, he didn’t feel crazy now.

“Please,” he begged. He was trembling and Mister could probably feel that. “ _ Please _ , don’t do this to me.”

Mister said nothing. He just walked forward, and Stiles found his legs walking with Mister of their own accord, closer and closer to the crowd of Fae. The Fae looked at Stiles with polite interest. Were these the cousins Ulliam spoke of?

As they reached them, Stiles tried to keep his head up, to keep back the tears that were waiting to spill from his eyes. How dumb to spend his last minutes  _ crying.  _ No. He  _ wasn’t afraid. _ He wasn’t afraid of these creatures. These blind, selfish,  _ arrogant  _ creatures! He clenched his jaw.

The Fae spoke amongst themselves, and then pulled back to reveal Ulliam.

Ulliam, on the other hand,  _ was  _ crying. He stood in the center of the makeshift ballroom with tears tracking down his face. His grand coat was dirty and ripped. He wiped his eyes, but that didn’t help. “Please,” he croaked. “Please don’t do this to me.” The echo sent shivers through Stiles.

Stiles pulled back. He dug his heels into the floor. He yanked and jerked at Mister. “Don’t!” he shouted. The Fae formed a circle around Ulliam, a gap open for Stiles to enter. Mister kept pushing him. There was music now, coming from somewhere Stiles couldn’t see. It echoed in his skull and dared him to just… give up.

Stiles gritted his teeth. “What is  _ wrong- _ ”

“-with you people!” Ulliam finished.

Stiles’s thoughts were slipping. They were falling right out of his head like loose teeth. He didn’t want this he didn’t want this he didn’t  _ want this. _ Mister let Stiles go, but Stiles couldn't run. He was stuck in the circle as the Fae sang softly around them. Their voices were bells in a summer wind. 

_ I’m dying _ , Stiles thought. He stood face to face with Ulliam as spirals of light began to glow at their feet. Letters didn’t have meaning. Thoughts were clouds of nothing. Puffs of smoke. Stiles knew suddenly then that  _ when this was over he’d think in magic, and it would all be so much easier. Everything would be magic. Fae were made for magic just as humans were made for math and science and reason. They breathed it. It was in their veins. _

There was a pool of water on the ground between Ulliam and Stiles, and through it, Stiles saw the reflection of trees and a blue sky. Ulliam stepped toward the puddle and Stiles sobbed. “ _ PLEASE!”  _ The voices grew in intensity. They vibrated the air. Every molecule was alive and Stiles could see  _ everything. _ He could see the in between and underneath and the should-have-been-trues.

Ulliam shook his head. “I have to do this. It's the way things are.”

“Then change it!” Stiles screamed. “Change the way things are!”

Amid all the screaming, Stiles thought to himself.  _ Scott thinks I’m dead _ .

It was such a pungent thought, it stilled the rest of the storm in his head.  Stiles couldn’t let Scott think that because Scott was going to be utterly useless if he thought Stiles was dead. That wasn’t vanity, it was just the truth.

He pushed a foot forward. And other. The puddle was  _ right there!  _ Home was right there!

“Ulliam.” Stiles met Ulliam’s eyes despite the raging storm around them. “ _ Help me _ .”

Ulliam hesitated. He dangled on the edge of the puddle.

Like a light switch, something changed. 

Ulliam darted around the puddle. The Fae shrieked in shock and laughter. The light grew brighter and brighter. Ulliam slammed into Stiles. He pulled them both backward.

And they fell.

They fell and fell and Stiles watched Mister at the of the puddle edge, his eyes wide with horror, screaming a name Stiles didn’t know.

Stiles slammed into a ceiling filled with leaves. The world clicked off.

They were home.

* * *

 

Two months was an awfully long time to live with the worst knowledge ever rotting in your stomach like old sandwich meat.

Scott parked his bike in front of the school and stared at the building dully. There was going to be an official assembly today. Stiles Stilinski was missing and presumed dead. The funeral would happen soon. It took weeks to convince Sheriff Stilinski it was time. Scott hadn’t seen the Sheriff in ages. Last he heard, he’d taken a leave of absence from work. No one had seen him since. Scott’s dad was currently in charge.

What else could they do?

Scott hadn’t told anyone what Deaton said. He didn’t think Stiles would want him to. In fact, Stiles had told him repeatedly to shut his trap. In the end, it also didn’t change anything. It made it worse, really. Stiles was gone either way.

What if he’d known earlier? What if Scott hadn’t been so _selfish_ to not see what was right in front of his eyes?  
Scott’s new favorite game was ‘what if?’. His other favorite game was ‘What Weird Things Did Stiles Do That You Didn’t Realise Were Weird Until Now’. It was a horrible game that went on 24-7. He hated reevaluating everything, but how could he not? There were little things that kept him up at night wondering.

He could recall vividly the night he and Stiles were locked in school, being chased by an insane Peter Hale. Stiles ran out to get a massive wirecutter outside of the doors so that they could keep the doors shut. Stiles ran, and as he came back, the werewolf raced toward Stiles. Stiles jumped forward, and suddenly… he was inside. He’d made it. He  _ outran _ an alpha werewolf. Scott was just grateful at the time that Stiles was alive, he hadn’t even thought about that. Was it chance? Or was it magic?

Or maybe he should think about how Stiles was the one who figured out that Scott was a werewolf in the first place? Stiles hadn’t even seemed that shocked. Excited, maybe. Anxious. But shocked? Overwhelmed? Stunned by the knowledge that the supernatural existed? No. Stiles rolled with it like this was all inevitable. Was it because somehow, deep in him, Stiles  _ knew _ such things existed? Or was it something else? Was Scott reading into this too much? Stiles always seemed to know when people were lying. He put things together Scott couldn’t have seen in a million years. Stiles was so clever! Maybe a little impossibly clever? No! He didn’t want to think that.

All those fantasy books Stiles read as a kid. All the games and movies. He dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween three years in a row! He was obsessed with magic!

Stiles could steal things more effectively than Scott could understand. Scott had never questioned before  _ how _ Stiles stole things. He just had things when it was convenient.

There were other aspects about Stiles that had bothered Scott for years, and he’d just… let it slide because Stiles was his friend and Stiles was a good person. He had to be.

Scott knew without a doubt that Stiles could care less whether a stranger died. Stiles would kill for a friend. But before that? Before he trusted them?

He’d been so busy at the time, but Scott remembered being slightly off-put by how callous Stiles was toward Derek when they were first meeting him. Derek was shot by Kate and her poisonous bullets. The man was dying right in front of Stiles! A real person. Sure they’d thought Derek might be a crazy murderer at the time, but still. Stiles had spent most of the time gagging about how bad Derek smelled and how he really wanted to just leave him on the street. That was a  _ person  _ and Stiles hadn’t really cared. It was… disturbing.

Maybe even the fact that Stiles had been so excited to find a ripped in half dead ‘body’. Was that kind of weird? That body had been a person, but Stiles didn’t seem to see it that way. (Then again, Scott  _ had  _ followed him out into the forest that night, so maybe they were just bored teenage boys. He didn’t know. He  _ couldn’t _ know!)

Scott wondered how many thoughts Stiles disguised as sarcasm. How many  _ ‘haha let's just kill him’  _ were… Scott shivered. 

No. No he refused to think like that. 

He hated that he’d even considered it. It was the worst type of betrayal he could imagine.

Stiles was his friend and Stiles was a good person. It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t human. He had been just as much a victim as the original Stilinski boy. Every time Scott thought thoughts like this, Stiles would be there next to him, so utterly hurt and Scott wanted to cry.

Scott hoped Stiles was a good person. He chose to believe that.

Also, he hoped Deaton was completely wrong and none of it had happened at all.

But why would Deaton lie? Who could possibly come up with a story that insane? Stiles probably could have, but Stiles had a special madness about him. Scott wanted to believe that he’d been nicknamed Mischief as a child because, sure, his morals were grey, but… but he’d  _ had _ morals. He was a well-meaning trickster. Stiles wasn’t a monster. He couldn’t be.

But what if he was?

What if Scott hadn’t been enough to keep him sane?

Scott clicked his helmet to his bike and walked into school, forcefully ignoring a glowering Stiles standing beneath an awning.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said.

“You should be,” Stiles answered.


	7. Chapter 7

The world was made of jello. Orange jello, to be precise. The crappy kind that was supposed to taste like oranges but didn’t.

A song trickled through the back of the place that may have been their mind.

_ Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream (bung, bung, bung, bung)... Make him the cutest that I've ever seen (bung, bung, bung, bung)...  _ What an irritating tune. Mr. Sandman wasn’t some  _ matchmaker! _ Ha! How splendidly ridiculous! How utterly pig-like. Piggish. Piglet.  _ Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh... _

You know that scene in Winnie the Pooh where they’re looking for Heffalumps and weasels (the cartoon, of course) and everything dissolves into some mad wonderland dream of dripping, licking, golden hunny… honney…. Honey?

I’m home!

_ Frankly, Darling, I don’t give a d*mn! _

What sound does an asterisk make? Is it like a puckering mouth? A kiss? Like a puckered cat’s bottom.  _ Witches like to give kisses! _

Cameras don’t capture people they capture their outsides. Could you draw a picture from the inside out? Start with the engine of a car and draw over it and draw over it until you had a real car right there in front of you to sell at an-

_I hear 200, anyone wanna go for 250? What’s that? Going once, going twice… Sold!_ _  
__…_ the house so we didn’t have to pay any more. We ran out of cash ten minutes ago and the whole world came crashing with it. But Superman can turn the world back around again and save Louis.

Louis the 3rd burned and persecuted those who venerated icons during the iconoclasm...

Casm.

Chasm.

They were standing in front of a whole and they didn’t know what was beyond it. Not a whole. A hole. A deep hole.

If I fell into that, I would never come up again. I might fall right out of the book pages and end up in the reader’s lap! Don’t be startled. Yes, I know you’re there. I won’t forever. But I know right now. I know you are watching me through the thin veil of paper and word. Sneaky you.

I think I’ll step into the whole now. Become whole now. This is a Hole Lot of Non- Sense

There was a voice calling them.

It was up high above. Swimming in the sky that wasn’t above a world that never is.

_ This is madness, _ they thought. How enlightening. For the first time, for the first time  _ ever _ , they weren’t afraid of anything. Intoxicating.

But the voice kept calling. It said sounds in an order they recognized.

It said  _ SSS… TTT _

ST.

_ STILES _

Style. He had a great sense of style! Thank you voice!

_ STILES STILES STILES! _

**_STILES_ **

The nightmare began with a whisper and the chirping of cicadas. Stiles flew up and slammed into something with his forehead. The world snapped back into place. He was in a forest of fall leaves that crunched under his hands. He was breathing hard. Damp dirt. He was covered in leaves. Above, light pollution blotted out any stars, but the moon shined bright. There were four days, seven hours and twenty-two minutes until the next full moon. The forest was quiet but for shuffling leaves and he found himself curled up in an alcove beneath the roots of a tree like a hibernating squirrel.

Stiles shivered.

He felt like himself again and was generally displeased about it. Mister had been right. It hurt to be human.

… Perhaps he wasn’t entirely himself yet.

He sat up again, slower this time, and groaned at the pounding in his head.

“Are you okay?” whispered a voice.

“I feel like a piece of gum someone chewed up and stuck under a table but then it dropped and got stepped on a lot and then a dog ate it.” Words felt… funny. He’d planned on saying something simple and sarcastic like  _ Oh sure, perfectly healthy over here thanks! _ And yet, there was a very accurate truth bubbling out of his mouth.

What had he been dreaming about? What  _ was that? _

“Are you at least mostly sane?” said the voice.

“I dunno,” Stiles answered. “I think so?” He rubbed his eyes and finally spotted the person speaking. It was U… _ why couldn’t he remember that kid’s name?  _ “Do you… do you have a nickname or something? I’m struggling with this.”

The boy snorted and came closer. He was covered in cuts and bruises and mud. Stiles imagined they both were. The boy held his head, a sour pucker to his mouth, and Stiles realized he’d headbutted him when he woke. “I don’t know what a nickname is.”

Stiles groaned and brushed the leaves and dirt off of himself. Were they near home? Did they make it? “Imma… Imma call you Liam.”

Liam crossed his arms. “Look, I took you back here, but there was no point whatsoever if you're entirely insane now.”

Stiles blinked at him. He could see him remarkably well in the moonlight, he thought. He struggled to his feet, using the tree roots to push himself up into something resembling standing. Something flickered in the back of Stiles’s mind and he frowned at Liam. “You’re not supposed to be like this. You’re supposed to be different. You’re supposed to be, like, a  _ wolf- _ ”

Liam rolled his eyes. “You’re thinking off a different version of me. People have lots of versions and some Fae can see them.”

Stiles stopped talking. Everything cemented, finally, and for what felt like the first time in an eternity, Stiles could think clearly.

Crap.

Holy mother of fu-

His first action as a newly sane individual was to curse very loudly and fall back into the roots of the tree. “Did that  _ all actually happen _ or was it just a dream?”

Liam shrugged. “It happened.”

“And…” Stiles scrubbed his face with his hands. “And you think I’m…”

“I  _ know _ . You’re one of the little people, sidne, faerie folk, etc.. There’s a lot of names. But specifically,  _ changeling _ . Now if you don’t mind, you’ve ruined my life  _ again, _ and I’m not fond of being your magic tour guide so... I helped you, and you’re here. Now I’m going to just take my sorry, sane, human butt to go die somewhere-” He turned and Stiles jumped up.

He was suddenly right next to Liam, grabbing his shoulder. It felt like the world had move around him instead of Stiles moving through the world. It made Stiles nauseous. “No,” he said. “Don’t go.”

Liam held very still. “If you want to hurt me, get it over with.”

It took Stiles a moment to process what he’d just said. Like being burned, Stiles jerked back. He stared at Liam in horror. “I… I wouldn’t-  _ dude _ !”

Liam frowned. He looked very young, then. Too young. He looked up at Stiles like a child that was resigned to their fate. Gods, what did those things do to him? Liam shook his head. “Maybe not now. But if I irritate you, you would.”

Stiles swallowed dryly. He wanted to freak out. He wanted to have a nice long major  _ Freak Out _ session. But he didn’t want to do it in front of Liam. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid! He’d have to wait until he was alone. For now, he settled for noting his shaking hands and wishing this kid wasn’t pissed off. “I don’t want to believe you,” Stiles muttered.

Liam gave him an unapologetic smile. “If it’s any comfort, I do not know what you are exactly. You’re definitely not entirely fae, or else you would have killed me by now for inconveniencing you, I think. But you can’t be human anymore because most of your reason is mine again anyway. I screwed up the system and I  _ shouldn’t _ remember any of Faerie, but I do. And, well… well, the point is, you’re pretty obviously not human.”

“What’s that mean? What’s so pretty obvious?”

Liam just shook his head. He started walking away, through the forest. Stiles stumbled after him. “Liam! Liam, don’t be like that!”

“I can be like whatever I want!” Liam threw his hands in the air and walked faster, lighter. “I’m human! I’m like a  _ worm _ , but hey, worms don’t have to worry about a lot!”

No, no, no. Liam was  _ not _ going to leave him out here alone in the forest after all that had just happened.

Stiles took a running step toward Liam, and again, he was right next to him, jogging slightly as Liam ran. Liam scowled at him. “Go away, changeling!”

“I can’t- are you serious right now? My entire life is falling apart and you’re just gonna-” He swerved around a tree, stepped on  _ air, _ and managed to keep up with him.

Liam stopped suddenly and shoved Stiles backward. Stiles stumbled, but  _ something  _ caught him and he didn’t fall. “You think you’re the only one?” Liam shouted. “You think you’re the only one who’s entire life is messed up?” Liam’s voice cracked. “You’re the reason all of this is happening to me!”

“ _ I _ didn’t choose this!”

“Neither did I!”  
“FINE!”

“ _ FINE _ !”

Their voices echoed into the woods. They stared at each other impassively, breathing heavily.

A thought floated behind Liam’s eyes and he took a step back, stunned. “You… you didn’t attack me.”

Stiles cocked his head. “No? Why would I? Liam, let me let you in about a little Stiles secret.” He came closer to him, and Liam did not budge, but Stiles could see him trembling. “I have killed more people than anyone I know,” he murmured. He kept Liam’s gaze locked in his own. “Having power like that over someone is overrated.”

Liam glared up at him. “Maybe. But it sure feels nice to not be afraid, doesn’t it?”

_ Yes, _ Stiles thought, before he could stop himself.

Liam raised an eyebrow and kept walking. It occurred to Stiles that he’d said that out loud. He didn’t follow Liam. He let him grow dark and shadowed between the trees. He let him disappear.

And then Stiles dropped to his knees and had the proper Freak Out he’d been waiting for.

* * *

“Are you going to pick that up are you going to just make me  _ stare _ at it.”

Scott resolutely didn’t look up or respond in any way. He took notes and tried to keep his brain on track. History. He was in history class. They were studying the Civil War.

The voice came closer, like it was just behind him, whispering in his ear. “ _ You dropped your pencil.” _

“Holy crap, Stiles,” Scott whispered, too low for anyone else to hear. “You are driving me insane”

Stiles snorted messily and Scott could swear he even heard the squeak of a chair as he sat back. “Says the guy talking to his own hallucinations.”

Stiles wasn’t a hallucination, Scott thought. He was just Scott’s imagination. He knew Stiles wasn’t really there. If he was a ‘hallucination’, Scott wouldn’t know it. Then again, he wasn’t exactly an expert.

Either way it was getting worse. He saw Stiles everywhere. He was around every corner, in every reflection. But Scott didn’t try to stop it.

Scott was supposed to see the guidance counselor after class. Mom made him go after she found him staring into blank nothingness for hours at a time. And yeah, maybe he did need someone to talk to.

But he didn’t need to talk to a counselor. He needed to talk to  _ Stiles.  _ He had only ever really talked to Stiles. The shrink wouldn’t know the first thing about what they had gone through, and Scott couldn’t exactly enlighten him. ‘I’m a werewolf and Stiles followed my lead in a chase after some faeries and then the faeries killed him. It’s my fault. But even worse, they might  _ not _ have killed him. Stiles could actually  _ be one of them _ and I have no idea what was real about him anymore at all.’

Yeah, he doubted that would go well.

Either way, he couldn’t talk to Stiles.

He went to the sessions because it made his mom feel better. It was funny to be on this side of a... mental distress discussion. He hadn’t even realized it, but he was so accustomed to being the healthy one. Stiles was the one with ‘issues’ and Scott was the one who told him things were going to be okay and texted  _ hey you wanna watch a movie? _ when things were particularly hard.

Scott wasn’t supposed to be here. He wondered how on earth Stiles had stayed calm all those years if people had given him looks like they were giving Scott. It was infuriating! He didn’t need this! His teachers told him he could step out whenever he needed, random people he’d never talked to gave him these  _ pitying _ looks and suddenly everyone knew Stiles! Everyone was Stiles’s best friend and they were all  _ so upset _ ! Random people were crying in the halls, setting up Facebook pages and support groups? Seriously? It was  _ dumb _ . They didn’t know him! They didn’t care about him at all until he was dead!

Scott enlightened the guidance counselor about some of these thoughts when it was time for their session.

“Would you rather they didn’t care at all?”

Scott scowled and tightened his grip on the armchair. The new guidance counselor was a middle-aged man who had wet eyes and a distractingly large number of chins. His name was Clarence. He was kind and Scott felt he really did want to help. Scott appreciated that. Scott didn’t think talking about all his crap was helping, but he only had two more sessions anyway so he figured he could suffer through that much.

“You’re right to be angry,” Clarence said. “They don’t know Stiles as you did. Of course not. But they are doing the best they can in a very sad situation. No one is very good at dealing with death. It doesn’t come naturally to humans.”

Scott raised an eyebrow, slightly amused by the wording. Human. What did that mean anyway? You could say ‘I’m only human’ and escape responsibility for flaws, but in the same breathe, you could praise someone for their humanity. Was being human being flawed? Or was it the knowledge that you were flawed that made you human? Was it the desire to be better what made you human? Or was it just biological and Scott clearly had been listening to Stiles blab in his head for too long? Scott didn’t use to be this philosophical. He didn’t really like these new thoughts.

Scott appreciated that Clarence didn’t beat around the bush. He said it straight. Stiles was dead. None of this ‘gone’, ‘in a better place’, ‘passed’. No. None of that vague, cowardly, escapist bullcrap.

Scott pursed his lips and his eyes dropped from Clarence’s eyes to his chins. His eyes lingered there and then floated behind him.

Stiles sat on the shelf behind Clarence, messing with a Rubix cube in his lap. His tongue stuck out the side of his mouth, and Scott smiled a bit. Stiles looked up at him. “So you gonna tell him about me?”

_ No, _ Scott thought.  _ I’ve got two sessions until I’m free. _

Stiles exhaled dramatically and tried to set the completed Rubix cube on the shelf. He missed, caught it as it fell and sheepishly slapped it down again. “Dude. I am all for getting out of therapy. Believe me. But this is bad. You realize  _ this _ ,” He gestured between them. “is bad.”

Scott shook Stiles away and turned his attention back to Clarence, who stared at him expectantly. Shoot. “Uh, sorry, what did you say?”

Clarence sighed.

_ Two more sessions to go.  _


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8  
There was buzzing. Like bees in his head. Like a screw was loose somewhere up in there.  
But it wasn’t in his head. Stiles fell out of the forest onto an unfamiliar road. It was dark.  
Well past midnight. Across the street, the buzzing and snapping persisted.  
The source was a neon blue sign on top of a tiny gas station, Stiles realized. It flickered  
manically. U KER’S AS  
Stiles squinted at the sign. “Uh…” That probably didn’t say what he automatically assumed. Stiles’s feet felt like they were encased in led. He drug himself across the road and tried to comb his hair with his fingers. His nails were caked with dirt. Was there anyone even in there? The lights were on so... He passed by one of the two gas pumps before pausing. Maybe he should try to clean himself up first before he scared the living daylights out of whoever worked  
here.  
The night was freezing. Stiles carefully unwrapped his arms from around his chest, scrubbing warmth back into them. He looked down at himself for the first time in the buzzing light and realized he was still wearing the green renaissance festival getup the faeries put him in.  
He… he didn’t have shoes. Stiles stared at his feet. How the heck did he not notice that before?  
At least he got a pretty neat coat out of this…

Stiles laughed breathlessly. “Holy crap,” he whispered cheerily. “I’m going to die.” He zipped away from the front door and continued around the back. Bathroom. He needed a bathroom. He also needed a shower and a bed and huge meal. What he would do for a burger right now…  
Stiles’s stomach growled. “Shut up,” he muttered. “I’m busy.”  
“Hey, Stiles,” Stiles said. “Is talking to yourself, like, a thing now?”  
Stiles shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe.”  
Stiles padded over brown pine needles. The air smelled like those pine needles along with the dusty rubber of an unfamiliar road. The neon blue light kept flickering behind Stiles. There.  
Bathroom. Stiles pushed open the door, curling his toes in disgust. Chill out. Whatever. It was a  
bathroom.  
Shuttering, Stiles shut and locked the door behind him.  
“Tucker’s Gas.” Stiles said.  
“Oh.” Stiles answered. “I thought-”  
“I know what you thought, dingus.”  
Stiles walked gingerly toward the sink and turned on the foset. It gurgled for a second and then water flowed freely. Stiles bent beneath it and drank deeply, suddenly beyond thirsty.  
He gasped for breath once he was done and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of the jacket. Gods, he felt human.  
Stiles turned the knobs and splashed warm water on his face, ran it through his hair. He  
shivered and pulled bits of dirt and leaves from his scalp. “Ehugh, dude.”  
“Oh, I’m sorry, would you rather I just left it in there?”

Stiles stilled, eyes on the mirror.  
Someone had drawn a dick on it in the bottom left corner.  
Stiles’s eyes slipped from the graffiti back to his reflection.  
The creature through the mirror raised an eyebrow, vaguely amused. Beads of water  
dripped down his face, catching the light. “What? You don’t like the makeover.”  
Stiles couldn’t move. He gripped the sides of the sink and swallowed thickly. “You look  
like…”  
“Like him.” Mirror Stiles snickered. His eyes were bright silver (something Stiles had  
forgotten about entirely) and still slitted and inhuman and unnerving and horrible. But that  
wasn’t all. His hair was longer, just a bit, and it floated in the air above his head like he was  
underwater. He was shockingly pale and too thin and he looked far too much like an old friend  
of his.  
“The nogitsune is dead,” Stiles gritted out. “You’re dead.”  
Stiles in the mirror’s mouth dropped open, clearly offended. His teeth were sharp, all of  
them, like a shark’s. Stiles ran his tongue over his own teeth, feeling the sharp points with a  
growing sense of terror. “I’m not a nogitsune!” spat his reflection. “Those low-life, angsty-  
Honestly, the audacity-”  
A loud bang snapped Stiles out of it. He jerked back from the mirror.  
Stiles stared at the door like he had no idea what it was. “J-Just a second!”  
More knocking. “The bathroom is for customers!” said a voice. “No smoking in bathrooms!”

Stiles scowled. He turned back to the mirror and splashed his face again. His hands shook  
and he glared at them. Ha. This wasn’t right. He already had his freak out. He was cool now.  
Cool and collected Stiles...  
“More like cool and uncollected,” said the mirror.  
“That wasn’t even a joke.”  
“You gotta get out of there!” said the man outside  
Stiles growled. He wiped his head toward the door. “Could you not be such a wet.  
Freaking. Sock!”  
“I’ve got a key-” said the voice. “You’ve got three seconds and I’m coming in!”  
Wait. Wait no. He couldn’t come in here! Not right now! Not while Stiles looked like this  
thing!  
Stiles’s breath caught somewhere in his esophagus, and he trembled so much he could  
hardly turn off the water. He turned toward the mirror desperately. “Please don’t do anything,”  
he whispered.  
The mirror crossed his arms and considered his words for way too long. Keys jingled  
outside. “The guy is a wet sock. Let’s kill him.”  
Stiles’s head snapped up like he’d been slapped. “W-”  
The door opened.  
And fury rushed through Stiles like fire. How dare this man assume he had any right-  
Stiles’s hand was around the worker’s neck, choking short any words. His pulse fluttering wildly  
beneath his delicate skin. Such thin, thin skin.  
Stiles laughed.

And a moment later,  
just a  
Single  
………………….Second  
…………………………………...Later  
Stiles blinked.  
He dropped to his knees, exhausted.  
Where was he?  
He looked around. The bathroom.  
The bathroom was… red. It flashed before his eyes. Guts and flesh and blood all over the  
walls, all over him, all over his hands, bits of flesh in his fingernails-  
NO!  
The flashing stopped.  
And it was clean again.  
There was no blood. It was just a crappy bathroom. Stiles gagged anyway, jerking his  
hands away from the man.  
He looked down. The worker was a middle aged, balding man. His entire throat was  
black as if smudged by charcoal, pierced with scratches, and his eyes fluttered, rolled up into his  
skull. He was alive, however. Thank freaking God.  
Stiles scrambled away, cursing wildly. Nononononononono “What did you do to him?”  
The mirror laughed shrilly. “He’s alive, silly.”

“LIKE BARELY!” Stiles screamed. He grabbed the man under his arms and drug him as  
carefully as he could out of the bathroom. He had to get away! He had to get away from that  
thing!  
The mirror’s laughter cut out the moment the door shut. Instantly, Stiles felt the madness  
teetering at the edges of his mind fall back.  
But now he was panicking. “I’m sorry. Gods, I didn’t- I didn’t think, I didn’t know I  
would-” Stiles wasn’t breathing right, again. He hiccupped and he was lightheaded. The world  
spun around and narrowed and NO! No, he had to fix this!  
Stiles scrambled through his brain. How could he fix this?  
Hospital. Call a hospital.  
Stiles dropped the man and his head clunked on the floor. Stiles winced but didn’t waste  
anytime. He dashed into the gas station. A cheery bell announced his arrival to no one. He raced  
down the aisles of plastic food and phone chargers and flew in one leap over the counter,  
knocking nearly everything to the floor. Phone, phone, phone… There! He grabbed the landline,  
dropped the phone, picked it up again with slightly steadier hands, and dialed 991.  
991, what is your emergency?  
Stiles’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.  
Hello?  
Stiles shook himself. “T-there’s been an accident. There’s a man. He got hurt. He’s  
unconscious. He had, uh, something around his neck. I’m at, I’m at a gas station. T-tucker’s  
Gas?”  
Stay on the line, we are dispatching an ambulance now.

That was all Stiles needed to hear. He dropped the phone, letting it dangle from the line.  
He reconsidered, wiped the phone down with the bottom of his shirt, and then set the phone  
down on the counter, still on. He had no idea if that was necessary, but better safe than sorry,  
right? The woman on the other end kept talking, but Stiles didn’t listen.  
He rushed back out of the store and skidded around the corner to the man. Was he  
breathing? Was he still alive?  
A single glance at him, and Stiles knew he was.  
“I… I’m sorry,” he croaked. And he was. He was sorry. He didn’t mean for this to  
happen.  
But now he knew, didn’t he? Now he knew why Liam was so freaking scared of him.  
He’d barely even thought about hurting the man, but the instant the inclination entered his mind,  
it was already done. He could have done this to Liam. Had Liam just been lucky?  
Stiles ran.  
He ran across the street and into the forest again and he wanted to run forever.  
But then he hesitated. He also wanted to make sure the ambulance arrived. The  
ambulance would drive in the direction of the nearest city, which would tell him where he  
needed to go.  
Stiles grappled for a minute before growling in fustration and grabbing fistfulls of hair in  
his hands. “Fine!” He’d wait.  
Stiles spun in a circle. Where to hide?  
He looked up. He’d never been coordinated enough to find tree climbing enjoyable. He  
should climb a tree. He’d be able to see up there.

He thought it, and it was done before the thought even finished. He reached a spot he  
could sit comfortably in a place he wouldn’t be easily seen, but he could see the gas station in its  
entirely. He scowled. It was like he didn’t even have a choice. He just kept doing things. Why did  
he keep doing things?  
The blue neon sign was soon joined by flashing reds and whites and even more blues.  
There was an ambulance and a police car and people Stiles didn’t know.  
They found the gas station worker quickly and loaded him up into the ambulance.  
Someone went into the gas station and came out waving his hands in exasperation. They were  
looking for Stiles, of course. They’d want to know what he knew. They’d want him to make a  
statement.  
But Stiles wasn’t exactly keen to do something like that. Could he still not lie? Was that  
still a thing? How was he going to function around that?  
He stayed in the tree and no one so much as glanced his direction. The police gave up  
looking for him after a few minutes, apparently deciding it was more important to get the victim  
to the hospital than look for an anonymous caller.  
The victim. Stiles’s victim.  
A wave of horror crashed over Stiles, and he nearly fell out of the tree. “Why did I do  
that?” He screwed his eyes shut and shoved the bases of his palms into his eyes. A deep breath.  
In. Out. He wanted normal eyes. He wanted hair that obeyed gravity and he wanted to redo the  
last ten minutes desperately.  
“Because you could,” Stiles answered calmly. “Because he isn’t important.”  
Screw that. Screw all of that.

The ambulance drove south. Stiles climbed out of the tree and followed at a distance.  
He was cold again.  
He wanted a bed and he wanted his dad.  
Stiles kept walking. Step after step.  
He wanted to be home.  
The road went on forever, unchanging.  
“How are you going to go home, Stiles? You think Dad will recognize you like this?”  
Stiles gestured at his own face for his own benefit.  
“I don’t know.”  
He hoped the gas station man was alive. As long as he was alive, it meant Stiles wasn’t a  
psychotic murderer. And Stiles didn’t want that. Stiles was sure. He’d killed people before. He  
knew what it felt like. But he could blame the nogitsune for those deaths. This was him. This was  
just Stiles. And this death would be murder. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t live with more of  
this.  
The sun rose on a strange reality, cloaked in fog and dew and four leaf clovers that grew  
in Stiles’s footprints (not that he noticed), when Stiles finally reached something he recognised.  
Stiles could hardly keep his eyes open. He didn’t know how he was still walking. But there was a  
little wooden sign in the woods. Welcome to Beacon Hill! Home of the Beacon Hill Cyclones!  
Stiles thought that noting that the lacrosse team was the ‘Beacon Hills’ Cyclones was just  
a bit repetitive but whatever.  
He stopped at the sign, his legs shaking under him like stilts.

As the sun rose, creeping toward Stiles cautiously, Stiles dropped to his knees. He fell  
forward, face first in the pine needles. Then he curled up, knees to his chest, and wrapped his  
hands over his ears. He’d just sleep for a minute. Forget. Forget it all. For the first time in nearly  
a millennium, a faerie fell asleep in the mortal realm.

* * *

 

The call came early. 6:52 AM.  
Noah Stilinski nearly missed it. He forced open his eyes. He’d fallen asleep in the shirt  
he’d been wearing for a week. He was at the kitchen table, papers, photographs, files, scattered  
in front of him. His son’s funeral was on Wednesday, which gave him two days to find Stiles.  
Noah sat up and scrubbed his face with his hands. He had the mother of all headaches,  
but he guessed he deserved that. Noah glanced guiltily at the empty bottle on its side, dangling  
over the table edge. He didn’t even know if he’d bothered with a cup. He shouldn’t drink. He  
couldn’t drink. Stiles would throw an absolute fit.  
Sunlight filtered through the dust in the air and sent stabs of pain into Noah’s skull. He  
grunted and fumbled for his cell phone across the table. It rang shrilly like it was personally  
offended with him.  
Seven miss-calls.  
Noah’s heart skipped a beat. It was the department. He called back and someone picked  
up at the first ring. Parrish. The young hot shot deputy. “Thank God, sir. You need to get down  
here. Now.”  
“Parrish, I’ll have you know, I am in the middle of an important-”  
“We found him.”

The entire world shrieked to a bloody stop and Noah toppled head over heels over it.  
Noah flew to his feet, knocking his chair backward into the wall. It crashed to the floor.  
His headache suddenly wasn’t important.“Stiles? You found Stiles?”  
He was already moving. Noah raced up the stairs, grabbed his jacket, threw on his shoes,  
and ran for police cruiser parked in the driveway. Parrish provided details through the phone,  
agonizingly vague.  
“Is he okay? Is he hurt? Where did you find him?”  
“They’re taking him to the hospital now.” The hospital?!  
“I’m on my way.”  
“I don’t doubt it.”  
“Is he hurt?”  
Hesitation. Noah’s stomach flipped. What did they do to you, Stiles? “Parrish,” Noah  
snapped. “Answer me.”  
“Sorry, sir. It’s… they found him unconscious at the town borders. He looked very pale,  
but he was physically uninjured. The officers that found him said he wouldn’t wake up, but that’s  
all I know. They were… They seemed disturbed but I… I don’t know why.”  
Wouldn’t wake up.  
That didn’t mean anything. He was uninjured. He would be fine. Stiles would be fine. He  
had to be. Noah didn’t know what he was going to do if Stiles… if he…  
No, that was a lie. Noah knew exactly what he would do if Stiles died. It would be easy.  
But it wouldn’t come to that.

Noah hung up on Parrish without a word. He pushed the cruiser faster. And if he used his  
sirens to stop traffic on his way, who was going to stop him? He was the sheriff and his son was  
alive


	9. Chapter 9

Scott learned about it through the news.

He was at breakfast, quietly ignoring fifteen-year-old Stiles blab on about how breakfast was for girly-girls and he needed to chill out with the whole ‘healthy schedule’ thing and go back to bed so they could play video games together.

School was in thirty minutes.

Scott didn’t want to go, but he was planning on it.

The TV droned on quietly in the living room. His mom lay asleep on the couch, her brow creased in worry. She curled up in a crocheted blanket, the remote dangling from her hand. Scott watched her. She worked too hard. She must have come in early this morning and planned on watching TV until he woke up, maybe to see him off to school.

Scott smiled a bit. Leaving his breakfast, he crossed to the living room in silence and knelt in front of her. He pulled the blanket carefully up her shoulder and took the remote from her hand. He would have taken her to bed if he thought she would stay asleep. Instead, Scott twisted to the TV, pointed at the screen, and cemented in place.

A news woman stood in front of his mom’s hospital. “M- mie…  _ Stiles _ Stilinski, missing and formerly presumed dead, has been found unconscious at the town edge early this morning…”

The remote slipped from Scott’s fingers.

The news brought up an old picture of Stiles. He grinned at the camera cheekily, his hair still buzzed short from that dare he and Scott had the summer before the whole world fell apart. He and Stiles made a pack months earlier that whoever couldn’t run around the track 10 times (they’d been training for lacrosse) without stopping by the end of summer would buzz their head… Stiles had lost to a chronic asthmatic, and it had been hilarious.

He still remembered Sheriff Stilinski bursting into laughter when Stiles came into the house. 

“Ha, ha. Yeah, hilarious.”   
“You look like a hedgehog, kid. What did you  _ do that _ for?”

It had been a good summer.

This particular picture was taken by Scott on a trip to the beach that summer. A moment later, Stiles had tackled him into the sand, and they nearly broke the camera.

But there the photo was, untainted and innocent. Why would they choose  _ that _ picture? Stiles didn’t look like that anymore. Not remotely.

Scott shook his mom and she woke up with a start. “Mom, mom-” He pointed at the TV.

_ There has been no statement from the Sheriff yet. Stiles is currently being hospitalized for element exposure… _

__ Mom fumbled up. She was still in her uniform and shoes, her hair askew. “Holy  _ shi-” _ She grabbed Scott’s arm. They ran out the door without further thought.

Scott jumped into the passenger seat and Mom backed out of the driveway, the tires shrieking. Scott clenched his hands. “How could he be-?”

“I don’t know, Scott.”

“What if it’s not him? How are we supposed to know if it’s him?” Scott’s voice got louder and louder as panic bubbled up in his throat like bile. “How would we even be able to tell if he’s even real! He could be anything! He could be some- some- some-”

“Baby.” His mom grabbed his hand, eyes on the road. “Its him. It’ll be him.”

Scott breathed in and out shakily. He squeezed her hand back.

“Maybe Deaton was wrong,” Mom said. “God, I hope so.”

They drove in a blur, and minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot. They left the car at the curb and burst into the hospital. Scott looked back into the parking lot. A few news cars dotted the place, people standing around with cameras, recording. It wasn’t often that missing kids were found, and Stiles was the Sheriff’s son. No one stopped them as they raced through the halls. Mom spoke quickly to other nurses. They all seemed to know what they wanted.

_ I need to call the others _ , Scott thought.

But that could wait for now.

They wove through hallways, up elevators. Mom spoke quietly to a younger nurse and turned back to Scott. They kept up their almost-run. “He’s in C wing. They’re trying to keep the room number on the down-low in case reporters get in.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s unconscious.”

Scott could take that. Finally, finally, they got to C wing.

Scott saw Sheriff Stilinski through the window first. He knelt next to a bed, his eyes red and puffy.

Scott wanted to cry too.

He steeled himself and followed him mother into the little hospital room. Stilinski looked up and blinked his eyes rapidly. He cleared his throat. “Aw, Scott. I’m sorry. I should have called-”

Scott hardly heard him.

His eyes were on the thin figure in the bed. Stiles was horribly pale, his eyes bruised and red. His hair was longer than Scott remembered. It hung over his ears thickly, long enough to hide his eyes if brushed down. Scott’s hands wrapped around the handle at the bottom of the bed and his mother stood behind him, an anchor in a crashing storm.

“Is he-?” Scott’s throat closed up.

“The doctors think he’ll be okay.” Stilinski managed. He took a deep breath and continued, more composed. “He’s malnourished and dehydrated and exhausted. They think he must have walked for miles. But,” A flicker of a watery smile crossed Stilinski’s face. “He’s okay. They’re pumping him with nutrients.” He nodded toward the IV in Stiles wrist.

This whole setup brought up vivid memories Scott really wished he could forget. When Stiles was little, he had a series of seizures. Scott remembered holding his daddy’s hand, waiting for when he could visit  _ S’iles _ . For years, Stiles had to get CAT scans to make sure his brain was alright, but he’d stopped having seizures when he was six or so. They doctors said he’d grown out of it. Some kids did.

Scott remembered visiting him in the hospital and finding five year old Stiles trying to get his IV out of his arm. He told Scott he was gonna escape, could he open the window for him?

Then Stiles wasn’t sick in the hospital for a long time, although he knew Stiles practically lived there when his mom was sick. Not until the nogitsune and the absolute horror of potential dementia, had Scott seen Stiles in a hospital gown, pale and lifeless and exhausted.

But Stiles wasn’t lifeless. He was alive.

Scott wiped his eyes, vaguely aware of his mother’s soft voice murmuring to him. “S-sorry. I don’t know why I’m... He’s okay. He’s… I didn’t think I’d ever...”    
They seemed to understand what Scott meant.

A few minutes of talking, and they settled down in chairs around the room. Mom excused herself to the bathroom (and probably to see if she was needed). They didn’t talk. They didn’t need to. They were in unspoken agreement that they would be here until Stiles woke up. Scott curled up in an armchair in the corner and texted his friends quickly. Malia didn’t watch TV (it confused her) so she definitely wouldn’t have seen. He texted Kira and apparently she’d just found out. She was on her way.

Who else should know? Scott shot Derek a text, but he got no response. The werewolf had been a-wall for awhile now and Scott didn’t expect anything else.

Deaton, Scott thought. Should he tell Deaton? Deaton probably knew.

But what would he do?

Scott’s stomach tightened. He looked up at Stiles again. His chest rose and fell easily. There was something about the way he held himself, even in his sleep, that was distinctly jarring. There was a frightening intensity in him, like he was about to burst up and scream. But then again… he looked like Stiles. Just… Stiles.

What else would he look like? Magic? That was dumb.

Stiles shifted in his sleep, mumbled something unintelligible, and stilled again.

Whether or not Stiles was a changeling, Deaton definitely believed he was. Would he try to do something to him?  _ I pray, for our sakes, he never returns to Beacon Hills... _

Scott’s jaw tightened. Stiles was going to have a werewolf and (as soon as Kria got here) a fox spirit guarding him, either way. Scott would be here when Stiles woke up. And they’d deal with it together, whatever it was.  _ If _ it was.

* * *

As it turned out, Stiles was alone when he woke up.

He’d been dreaming about Lydia, which was not unusual. They were at a beach, sitting on a dock with their legs dangling over the edge. There was no sound but the calling of gulls and the  _ shhh, shhh, crAShh, shhh, shhh  _ of the waves. A chilly breeze cut through Stiles’s hoodie, salt filled and nibbling. They hadn’t said anything, but Stiles knew she was scared.

He looked away from the horizon to focus on her face. Her eyes were red. Had she been crying?

“Lydia, what’s wrong?” He shifted on the dock and tried to touch her, but she flinched back.

So he set his hands back into his lap, twirling them restlessly.

“Lydia, please. Let me help you.”

Lydia hummed. She looked down from the doc toward the beach, where a little redheaded girl in a hot-pink bathing suit played by herself in the sand. Her parents lay near her on a checkered blanket, hands clasped. They were all smiling and things were easy.

Stiles knew who they were.

“They used to take me here all the time before they split.” Lydia said. Her eyes clouded and she sniffed. She wiped her eyes hastily, and suddenly looked up at him. Her eyes widened in shock. “S-Stiles?”

Stiles frowned. “Yeah? Yeah, it’s me, Lyd.”

But Lydia didn’t seem to understand. She scrambled away from him. He tried to go after her. She was too close to the edge. A tinge of fear arched through his heart. The wind picked up and the sky darkened. What was wrong with her? Why did she look at him like that?

“Lydia, come back! You’re gonna fall! You’re gonna-” He jumped forward, desperate to grab her before she-

“Get away from me, you freak!”

Lydia pushed him. And as she fell into a roaring sea below, they both screamed-

Stiles blinked open his eyes.

He exhaled slowly, slumping deeper into the bed. Thanks for that, subconscious. What a nice little pick-me-up to start the day. Stiles looked up at the ceiling tiles and tried to think about anything but the look on Lydia’s face.  _ She’s terrified of me... _

It occurred to him then that he was in a hospital.

Should he be worried about that?

This smelled like the hospital in Beacon hills (he’d been here enough to know). So, he was human enough to not get carted off to Area 51 the moment doctors examined him.

What did that mean, then?

Well, if anything these thoughts meant he still had the ability to reason, which had been a bit touch and go, he admitted.

Stiles sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. His head pounded like something was trying to escape from there. The curtains in his room were closed and the room was dark but he could see fine, like he’d been in an even darker place just before.

Stiles swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stilled when his head swam. Take it slow… He touched mentally the abyss somewhere back in his head, and quickly pulled away from it. He felt like his skull had been opened up and someone forgot to put his head back in place. There was a raw opening somewhere in his mind that didn’t used to be there. Not like this. It was such an intense sensation that Stiles reached back to touch the back of his head, just to make it was still there. His fingers tangled in his hair. When had it gotten so long?

Stiles steadied himself and touched down on the cold tile. He padded to the bathroom, dragging the IV with him, and didn’t bother turning on the light. Almost against his will, his eyes flicked to the mirror. He prepared himself for glowing eyes, sharp teeth, frayed edges.

But it was just Stiles.

He exhaled and a weight dropped from his shoulders. Yeah, he looked half dead. But he didn’t look like a monster. “thank God,” he whispered.

Once he was done with the bathroom, he was about to climb back into bed, when the door opened.

Stiles wiped toward it, muscles clenched and ready to… he didn’t know what.

The person made a strangled-like sound, and suddenly arms wrapped around him into a  _ way _ too tight embrace. “I was gonna be here when you woke up. I went to get coffee. Stiles, I-”

Something like tenderness crept up behind Stiles and he hugged Scott back, just as tightly, breathing in his very familiar scent. Emotions fell back into place. Stiles hadn’t even realized how detached he’d been, but now a rush of overwhelming relief washed over him. Where was his dad? Maybe it had all been a dream. He’d been high on mushrooms or something. Scott, here, now, he was real.

“Not that I’m against hugs, but I’m kinda in pain-” (He was. His entire body ached.)

Scott jerked back. “Oh! Sorry. Sorry, I forgot!” He grabbed Stiles by the shoulders and pushed him (gently) to the bed, and Stiles was too tired to resist. He climbed back inside shakily and Scott crawled onto the bottom of the bed like a lost puppy. “Do you need anything? Should we call a nurse or-?”

Stiles snorted. “You could get me my pants?”

Scott blinked. A smiles stretched across his face. He jumped off, shuffled through a plastic bag in the corner and pulled out a pair of basketball shorts. Stiles had no idea where Scott got them. “Apparently the clothes you came in were kind of messed up?”

That was an understatement. He wondered where the green coat got to. He’d like to set it on fire, thank you very much. He caught the shorts when Scott threw them and pulled them on. At least he’d been wearing boxers.

The door opened again.

Stiles noted several things immediately that sobered his mood.

Dad hadn’t shaved in several days, his eyes were bloodshot, he was wearing an old, stained shirt, and his shoes were on the wrong feet (what even?). There was a look in his eyes that scared Stiles more than these external factors. Stiles had been granted twenty-four hour access to that blank, dazed look for months after Mom died.

Stiles blinked, stunned. Dad stared at him for half a second, then he rushed forward and wrapped him in another tight hug.“Don’t  _ ever _ do that again,” Dad rasped. He dug his hands into Stiles hospital gown, like he was afraid Stiles would dissolve out of it.

Stiles didn’t think he was much of a cryer, but he was suddenly so scared. He was tired and in pain and overwhelmed and sad and relieved. He choked on sobs as he clung tighter to his dad. It hadn’t even been that long, but he  _ missed him. _ He missed him so much. He wanted to keep being held forever. He needed to be held. So he gripped him tighter.

 “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Stiles could smell the distinct, sharp scents of alcohol and cigarettes hanging on his dad’s clothes.

A wiggling, horrible thought whispered in Stiles’s ears, forcing him to pull away. Something was not right. He didn’t want to ask. He wanted to sit with his dad on the bed and forget about everything. But he had to. He  _ had _ to. He glanced at Scott, more carefully now, and then back at Dad. They both gave Stiles concerned looked.

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” Stiles said before he could stop himself. His mouth seemed to move now as thoughts came into his mind. He had to actually bite on his lips to keep from speaking.

Scott’s hair was slightly longer than Stiles remembered. He was wearing a shirt Stiles had never seen before. But Stiles been gone for a day at most... Maybe two.

“How long,” His throat dried up but he tried again. “How long have I been gone?”

Scott and Dad exchanged worried looks. Scott sat down on the edge of the bed again. He did so gingerly. “Two months.”

Stiles stared at him. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. “Ha, funny. Real creative.”

They didn’t look like they were playing.

Panic edged up, ready to grab hold of him again. “It was yesterday. I  _ swear _ I was only there one day-”

“Where, buddy?” Dad frowned. He asked like this wasn’t that big of a deal, but Stiles knew he was trying to keep him calm. He was faking,  _ lying.  _ Right to his face. And for some reason that bothered him more than he expected. In fact, it disgusted him.

The wind from the abyss in his mind roared a little louder. Stiles’s hands curled into fists around his blanket. Scott stiffened.

Stiles pushed back the wind and loosened his grip. The answer to Dad’s question sat on his tongue, begging to be released. He didn’t dare open his mouth lest the whole story spill forth.

Scott spoke up when obviously Stiles wasn’t going to. His eyes were dead and his voice cracked. “Your funeral was going to be on Wednesday. I even bought a suit.”

Stiles’s eyes widened further. “ _ Funeral _ ?” he squeaked. “You thought I was  _ dead _ ?” Stiles was horrified. They spent  _ two months  _ thinking that?

“Technically, missing,” Dad grunted. “Since there wasn’t a... body. But Scott insisted he saw...”

Stiles’s hand drifted up to his collarbone almost of its own volition. Scott followed the movement with his eyes and nodded. “I thought it killed you,” he said softly.

Stiles didn’t know how to respond. The raw devastation in the eyes of two people that cared the most for him was painfully obvious. He didn’t know how to deal with that. He’d gone and ruined them. This was all his fault.

He fell to his usual resort and cracked a grin. “Well, I hope you kept the receipt for that suit, Scott.”

The tension broke, as Stiles hoped it would. They all laughed. But something deep in Stiles twisted.

**Author's Note:**

> If you feel so inclined, drop me a comment or a kudos or a psychic pat on the head idk :)


End file.
